Category: Interactive 2

Assignment 4: I Am Michael Jackson Documentation

 

Here’s a documentation of the alpha blend tutorial. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

 

Jokes aside, here are some things that could be worked on

  • feathering the sides of Michael Jackson’s face
  • increasing the size of the face suit facial proportions
  • opacity increase to show face morph

 

Interactive II: Project Milestones – 15 April

What we achieved:

Max MSP

  1. Extracting coordinates from Synapse and linked it to Max MSP
  2. Changing from mouse control to Kinect coordinates
  3. Particles initially tracked only on X and Y axis of window, but debugged to follow joint coordinates to move freely around the screen
  4. Fine tune particles to follow joints more smoothly
  5. All joints initially mapped to the left hand, leaving particles only connected to one joint
  6. Converting jit.gl.mesh into a matrix
  7. jit.xfade displays patches in separate windows but managed to sync individual particles into one window
  8. failure to interpolate Synapse’s Kinect’s depth mode and using it as a background mask layer – but created an alternative solution of background visualiser
  9. Audio-visual react – connecting Ableton to Max

For Max MSP, we managed to overcome several challenges that popped up time to time obstructing our process. Firstly, a block was being unable to connect the coordinates of the particles to the Kinect movement instead of ‘prepend mouse’. We managed to solve that by removing an argument in the code. Another main milestone was to be able to project all joint’s particles into one window, where initially it would open up in separate windows. Right now, we are currently in the stages of fine tuning the aesthetics and fine tuning the triggers of the audio.

Ableton Live

  1. Getting base tracks to work with commands dials
  2. Improved auditory tracks
  3. Fine tuning movements and audio react

For Ableton Live, it was a high level challenge to experiment with a new music software in just a short time period. Essentially, this project also requires music making and DJ skills in a sense, where cutting of tracks and beat matching is the key to making it work. Also, genre also played a major part that affects the entire project, with its varying tempo, sounds, and methods of triggering its layers. (Instrumental backing track, melody, beats etc). We overcame our first hurdle of finding fitting tracks and music cuts. Right now we are working on its seamlessness and gelling  the suitable sounds to an action triggered by the player.

 

Main Challenges

  • Producing suitable background tracks and music cuts
  • Achieving seamless audio react
  • Getting softwares to communicate with one another

Final Project Milestone

 

 

 

Project Basis: Live visuals + sound + movement

Interactive II

Team members: Valerie , Gladys, Siew Hua

 

Our project focuses on creating sound and visuals synced to body (mainly hand) movements. Using a Kinect as an input, body tracking movements are detected and communicated between Ableton Live and Synapse to create dubstep tunes. As for the visuals, particle movements are projected as they trail the gestures of the users.

 

Our interest lies in exploring movement and effecting visuals as an outcome. We would also like to explore the music aspect MaxMSP. With these interests, it motivates us to create an interactive and aesthetic final work that engages them in an overall immersive experience .

 

End Goal

Interactive Installation

  • Interactivity: Live music creation based on hand movements, visuals reacting to movement
  • Create abstract artwork and music
  • Goal: Explore the relation of movement, creating music and artwork through space and spontaneity

 

21 March

Synapse with Kinect, linking MAX with Kinect (detection of joints)

Explore particle system in Max

 

28 March

Create sounds with Ableton

Link particle system to Kinect – rough physics

Sync sound and visuals

 

4 April

Toggle visuals for MAX-Kinect, more refined

Linking of the sound and visuals for the installation

 

11th April

Setting up of the installation

Finalization stage and refining of artwork

Testing of interactivity, proof-checking

 

18th April

Submission

Change in the gen make a new parameter? Put param – make yourself a new parameter xy

Twerk Tracker

The Twerk Tracker

Users move their heads from left to right to control the rate of twerking

Glitches

I wonder if anyone else also faced this issue but the lighting of the face tracker video glitches harder in certain lightings.

Previously after tweaking the values in scale, the video was able to run smoothly. But after setting up my laptop in a different setting, the twerking video looks like the frames are staggering

Improvements

It is better you use a video with linear movement. I’ll definitely keep that in mind for the final project and experiment more with the mechanics to minimize glitches for our final project.