Re-Tratos (Portraying || Dealing With) is an interactive work that establishes a temporary connection between audiences in two contexts, which are divided but also interdependent: Cubans living on the island and Cubans living in Miami.

Description

An interactive two-way mirror which projects faces onto the viewers face by my classmate, Felipe Castelblanco. I created the software for the project using video capture/playback techniques and face tracking.

Presented at the Camagüey International Video Art Festival in Cuba, April 2013.

For more info, see Felipe’s Website: http://www.felipecastelblanco.com/re-tratos

Background

Felipe stopped in Miami on his way to Cuba and recorded video portraits of Cubans living there. “Do you have a message for Cuba?” At the festival, these portraits were then projected onto the faces of the Cubans looking into the mirror.

Made using OpenFrameworks and ofxFaceTracker.

Mars Society Mars Desert Research Station, Crew 119, Dec 1-14 2013

In this Martian analog on Earth, the crew spent 2 weeks living and working in a remote, simulated habitat: planning Extra Vehicular Activities, wearing space suits, exploring the terrain on foot or via rovers, maintain/upgrading systems, and experiencing a tin-can existence. Through this research, they’ll be able to better understand how people will live and work effectively on the Red Planet.

Dan’s mission was to document what life will be like for the first humans on Mars from “a feet on the ground” perspective. This work was research for his MFA Thesis project: a live musical performance and concept album around the theme of humanity crossing the sea of space and touching down on a familiar new world.

Journal

As Crew Journalist, I wrote a daily report in the “first landing” perspective and compiled pictures to send to Mission Support. After returning to Earth, this information was compiled into a book: Heading to Mars

Press

Press about my particular trip

CMU Tartan Article: Professor, students take a trip to an alien destination

CMU Piper: Mars Adventure: Two-week Simulation Spurs Imagination of Students, Lecturer

Training

Before heading to the MDRS, I did a little training in the red soil of my hometown, Huntsville AL:

Images

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The Cyborg Cabaret explores human, robot, and cyborg relationships in a variety show format featuring everything from cutting edge metal machines to cardboard-suited meat bags. Expect tear-jerking vignettes, frequent non-sequiters, and lots of humor through avant art-meets-science theater.

http://cyborgcabaret.org/

Co-directed by Heather Knight & Dan Wilcox with videography by Ben Saks.

The show took place at the New Hazlett Theater in Pittsburgh, PA on Friday, April 27, 2012.

Made possible by the CMU School of Art Interdisciplinary Award 2011

Sponsors

Partners

What if today’s robotic technology could be put to the test in a one-on-one tiered wrestling tournament? How would a Roomba stack up against a UAV? Could a Google self-driving car defeat the cuteness of Keep-On? Uh oh, Geminoid was talking smack about the CMU CRUSHER! It’s on!

Opening Opening Opening! Come on down to see who will win the Colossal Weight championship of the world!

Description

Robot Rumble is a live multimedia performance where actors portray real-life robots in one on one bouts in the style of backyard and WWF wrestling. Major themes of robots and society will be explored through cardboard-crushing, masculine soap operatic action.

The event will occur on the opening night of the first and second year MFA show at Bakery Square in end of March and a subsequent showing will take place in the end of April as part of the upcoming Cyborg Cabaret show.

Reference Videos

Macho Man’s Cocaine-fueled Interview
Load the Spaceship With the Rocket Fuel.
The Ultimate Warrior’s “Crash The Plane” Promo

When

March 30th, 10pm @ Bakery Square as part of the Extra Fancy CMU MFA spring show

words become the shape of my mouth as I read Geometry and Non

Description

I was given an assignment to create a screen print based on the city of Venice and inspired by the poem Geometry and Non by Jennifer Scappettone (Actually, this is a erroneous amalgamation of various poems attributed to Scappettone, sorry this is a collage given to me as the *real* thing. Apologies.). As more of a performer then visual artist, I decided to create a piece of software that could turn a reading of the poem into it’s visual analog. This singular performance generated both the print as a PDF and video documentation of its creation.

Built using Open Frameworks, ofxKinect, OpenCV, and Jason Saragih’s FaceTracker through Kyle McDonald’s ofxFaceTracker wrapper.

Music: La Serenissima (Theme From ‘Venice In Peril’) by Rondo Veneziano.

Images

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On Monday September 5th I took part in Netrooms performed at The University of Nottingham Ningo, China campus.

Netrooms: The Long Feedback is a participative network piece which invites the public to contribute to an extended feedback loop and delay line across the internet. The work explores the juxtaposition of multiple spaces as the acoustic, the social and the personal environment becomes permanently networked. The performance consists of live manipulation of multiple real-time streams from different locations which receive a common sound source. Netrooms celebrates the private acoustic environment as defined by the space between one audio input (microphone) and output (loudspeaker). The performance of the piece consists of live mixing a feedback loop with the signals from each stream.

Live sound is streamed from the performance to each location, locally processed, and streamed back via a Pure Data patch. The participants communicate via a liveblog.

I set up a speaker and microphone in the Great Hall of the Carnegie Mellon College of Fine Arts building. The performance ran from 18:30-19:00 GMT+8 (6:30-7:00 EST).

Experiments in balloon motion and sound using an MS Kinect depth sensing camera.

Created for the Carnegie Mellon 1st & 2nd year MFA Graduate show entitled “Fresh Baked Goods” at Bakery Square, April 2011.

Description

A machine stands in a room surrounded by balloons. Circulating fans blow the balloons over the machine which creates sound based on their movements.

Mode 1: Tones

Balloon height and x/y position control the pitch and panning of a treble and bass voice. The tones can be quantized into a certain key or a glisssando can be employed for a theremin-style effect.

Mode 2: 99 Luftballons

The playback speed of Nena’s 99 Luftballons is controlled by balloon height. The balloons must be kept in the air for the song to play. Feed the machine.

Built using Open Frameworks, ofxKinect, and OpenCV for balloon tracking and Pure Data for sound generation/playback.

Music: 99 Luftballons by Nena

EDIT: On Create Digital Music

Images

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Notes

Popping Balloons: The space was very dry and dusty. As a result, many balloons popped involuntarily. This was an unintended feature which kept visitors on their toes.

Large Space: The next version of this installation will be made in a smaller space with more balloons …

A simple Open Frameworks application using the MS Kinect depth sensing camera via libfreenect and ofxKinect.

The computer searches for my manboobs and draws a bra or pasties on top. Music is played when titties are detected.

I’m using OpenCV on the depth image. I look for a person-sized blob and use it’s centroid to approximate a search box wherein to detect 2 boobs. The bra or pasties are drawn using the centroids of these boob blobs. A third blob detector is used to look for the hand to change between bras.

The second half of the video shows a projection mapping of the bras/pasties onto my chest. This is all running in realtime and in low light conditions with a bad background. Yes, the Kinect sensor is pretty awesome!

Music: Hot Stuff by Donna Summer

Edit: Picked up by Kotaku

Edit2: Now on Reddit

Edit3: On Slashdong: Kinect Sex

Edit4: Now on Australian news The Age “… there’s been a spate of videos using the technology, such as this man putting a BRA on himself” (thanks for the link Tim)

Software Follows Nipples

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Pure Data

We made a simple Pure Data patch which replicates the experience. Plug in a microphone and headphones (preferably closed ear types) and give it a shot.

EDIT: The original patch was using a 100 ms delay. Later on I was told the original piece used 283 ms, calculated form research into cognitive perception, etc. I have updated the speed and, indeed, the effect is much more pronounced.

boomerang.pd

RjDj

I took the Pd patch and then made an RjDj scene which can be run on an iPhone or iPod Touch. RjDj is a “reactive music” environment that runs live, interactive songs.

Install RjDj on the App Store and download Boomerang from the Soundtrips section. The effect works really well with earbuds, just make sure to turn up the volume. You can also make recordings and upload them to RjDj if you create an account.

Transcription

Here is a transcription I made of the original video as source material:

Yes, I can hear my echo and the words are coming back on on top of me. The words are spilling out of my head and then returning into my ear.

It puts a distance between the words and their apprehension or their comprehension. The words coming back seem slow. They don’t seem to have the same forcefulness as when I speak them. I think it’s also slowing me down. I think that it makes my thinking slower. I have a double-take on myself. I am once removed from myself. I am thinking and hearing and filling up a vocal void. I find that I have trouble making connections between thoughts.

I think that the words forming in my mind are somewhat detached from my normal thinking process. I have a feeling that I am not where I am. I feel that this place is removed from reality, although it is a reality already removed from the normal reality. The words keep tumbling out because I want to hear them. I want to hear my own words pouring back in on top of me.

It is …

- some sound samples are played: footsteps, several short snippets of a woman’s voice

It is … I am hearing other things … coming in on me. There is something else besides my own that I am hearing. The words become like things. I am throwing things out into the world and they are boomeranging back. Boomeranging. Boomeranging back. The words bounce and come again, I hear an empty space. My voice or the microphone system lost a word or two that I spoke.

- voice off camera

- the video signal cuts off and there is the sound of tape being rewound

I just had to wait for 60 seconds to come back on. Which makes me think about the difference between instantaneous time in words and delayed time. Instantaneous time is an immediate perception, whereas delayed time is more like a mirror reflection. Reflection. Reflection. A mirror reflection. Delayed time puts another …

I don’t hear my own voice again. I’ve lost the words.

- delay cuts off

- voice off camera: “We ran out of tape, just keep talking”

So now, since they’re changing tape.

- delay returns

Now I think it’s starting to work again, but for a while I heard only my own voice at the time that I was speaking. But now I hear my own voice slightly delayed coming back in on top of me so that I am surrounded by me and my mind surrounds me. My mind goes out into the world and then comes back inside of me. There is no escape. It is a constantly revolving, involuting experience. Sometimes I find that I can’t quite say a word because I hear the first part of it come back and I forget the second part or my mind is stimulated in a new direction by the first half of the word.

The lights are shining down on me while I am speaking about these things. These lights contribute a rather substance, substance-less reality to this situation. The light in it’s immateriality is like the sound in its immateriality. The light hits me and reflects off of me into the camera. The words leave me and are reflected back into my ear and into your ear. You are hearing and seeing a world of double reflections and refractions.

Time in this isolated capsule of television experience is cut off from time as we usually experience it.

This is a quick video documentation of the Ars Electronica Center Facade Terminal which I helped implement while working for the Ars Electronica Futurelab in Linz, Austria.

The Facade Terminal is a touch screen pc mounted in a concrete pillar near the Danube. Visitors can use 3 different applications to control the building: Pulse, Music, and Cam.

Pulse: have your pulse read and visualized on the facade

Music: plug in a music device and control visualizations on the facade

Cam: place a cellphone on the camera and play your videos on the facade

I wrote most of the software and designed the audio visualizations (with pointers from Lia).