Exercise 3, See Yourself Sensing: 66 Meters Apart.

 

66 Meters Apart is a project that explores the disruptions in the train of thought when a speaker is articulating their words, as our brain functioned as it should, we’ve forgotten how complex the brain are in these almost instantaneous real time processing of information that we sensed. By using 66 Meters Apart, user will have personal experience of these disruptions within our thought and notice how easily it is to distract our focus even from simple task like reading out loud a few sentences.

 

The 66 meters refers to the metaphorical distance created between the mouth and the ear through digital latency of 200ms, which is the time for sound to travel approximately 66 meters. As we hear our own voice through bone conduction from our vocal tract to our ear (which is much faster than the speed in which sound travel in air of the same distance), the physical latency it took to hear ourselves speaking is almost instantaneous and we were accustomed to this. By introducing a 200ms latency of us hearing our own voice, it could greatly impede our concentration in thinking as well as speaking in most of us.

The system which I am using for this project is the Lattepanda, which is a hackable computer and I’ve installed Max MSP into it for this project.

As LattePanda does not come with a sound card for microphone input and the only headphone require input and output jack separately, I had purchased an USB soundcard on carousell and luckily it works.

I was prepared to write the slightly longer code which require to delay the sound from the input to the output, however I found out that there is a “Latency” function in the audio setting and so I used that instead, also, I’ve add an audio gain to the patch to increase the output volume of sound. This is the simplest piece of patch and it works just as I needed so being simple is really good!

 

Telematic Stroll to the Sunrise.

First of all, we did not want to use the Facebook Co-Broadcasting function as our goal of this Telematic Stroll is to test out the system for our final project(there will be four broadcasting at the same time and none of us could see what others are doing, yet we will form a piece together.) ANNDD MANNNNNNN~~ THIS WORKS SOO MUCH BETTER THAN EXPECTED!!

Telematic stroll

Posted by ZiFeng Ong on Monday, 6 November 2017

This was the Broadcast which I did and viewing it individually doesn’t seemed like much, its just a random walk-around video which wasn’t impressive at all.

But when linked it with Bao’s Broadcast… Things get a little more interesting.

 

  1. Both Broadcast were not edited in any way except for putting them side by side, if we create a video wall and play it directly, it will be the exact thing.
  2. The video were done on the spot through Facebook Live without any feedback of the other Broadcaster available to both of us, we only know what we were doing while unable to see the other party, even if we do, there will be a 7 second delay between broadcasting and watching live.
  3. In conclusion, This is Magic.

But how are we doing it? It’s a secret for now and we shall keep it until our final project. For now we are still improving our system and you should just take it as it is a MAGIC. TADAA!! A sense of wonder for a viewer is what we wanted to achieve. 

This is our one and only try. Most of the times we were uncoordinated and we did not discussed what to film beforehand while there were mistakes made everywhere throughout the broadcast and we did some of the mistakes at the same time which made it seemed intentional, making it even more magical.

To point out some of the wonderful MAGIC we did.

In this Telematic stroll, we had found out what problem there is during the live broadcasting and will improve it for the final project, also, it had been a really long time since I woke up this early.

When I left house, the sky was still dark and it reminded me of my future.

 

I really like this random shot before the Stroll.

After the stroll, when the sun finally rise.

we checked the timing for sunrise and it stated that it was 6.47a.m, but the actual sun came up only around 7a.m which is when we finished our Telematic stroll.

Luckily for me, right after we finished the broadcasting, it started to drizzle. And did I mentioned that we were supposed to do on Monday morning and we woke up at 5a.m. and it was raining so we postpone our stroll, it was really lucky for us that it wasn’t raining on Tuesday morning even when the weather forecast said would.

Finally, I am REALLY impressed when I put the video next to each other, they worked really well and there is improvements that could be made and we all learnt from it.

 

 

Cross Streaming Technical Test (With Bao)

Since the last time we cross streamed during the lesson:

part 2. Adventure in ADM

Posted by ZiFeng Ong on Thursday, 14 September 2017

Video from my phone which I am unable to embed in this post, not sure why but all the setting are the same, >>CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO<<

we noticed that there were two major flaws in the cross streaming system, During that lesson, we used Bao’s Windows Laptop and my phone, both connecting to the ADM internet, since the Laptop were supposed to stream a live video and produce a stream at the same time, we could say that it is downloading and uploading at the same time hence the total bandwidth the computer had was split into two. The biggest problem we found in the cross streaming was that by having the phone connecting to the school internet, every time when the phone goes to a different area in ADM, there will be a short breakage with the connection in the Live video as the Wifi connection changed router, moreover, if the phone Wifi isn’t strong, the quality of the live video drop drastically, The lagginess was amplified by the low bandwidth of the computer, its as good as watching an already choppy movie with lousy dial-up internet, the overall experience wasn’t good.

HENCE! Through reverse engineering, by judging from the quality of the video, we could see which area in ADM have the best internet connection!
The connection in the classroom was the worst. look at the pixelated graphics, I am not moving and yet the terrible quality.
The Internet connection at basement was as bad as in the class, everything was blurry, cant even recognize the people in the video, BAAADD~
The Stairs to the basement doesn’t seem to have good connections and blurry visual doesn’t look pleasing at all.
The Lounge was having generally acceptable connection and hence the better quality
The Lounge’s connection was really stable and the quality is great
IM room got one of the best connection out of all place and the graphical quality was superb even when I was swinging the camera around. (Please scroll up to see the quality of the basement classroom, you will notice a clear difference in the relationship of better internet = better video.)

 

This is why, we will solve it, by hook or by crook.

The easiest problem to solve was when the phone connects to the school Wifi and the connection breaks when the phone switch router among ADM. Since the problem is with school’s Wifi, we tried to use our own phone’s Mobile Data, there was almost no lag and furthermore, the quality of the stream improved drastically due to the faster uploading speed from the phone, resulting in higher definition of the live stream.

Songyu Bao experiment 1

Posted by ZiFeng Ong on Tuesday, 19 September 2017

Notice that when I changed zone within ADM, from IM room all the way to the handicap lift near the library, there was no breakage of the connection even in the handicap lift. This, I must say, is a great improvement.

Next, is the problem of watching stream and uploading a stream from the computer and split the bandwidth into two, there is no way around it, the only approach we can do is to find a place with good internet connection and make sure that the speed will be sufficient to produce excellent streaming experience. AND GUESS WHICH PLACE IN ADM HAVE GOOD INTERNET? So, without further ado, we went to the IM room as the internet connection was relatively stable there.

Again, I can’t figure out why the Video doesnt want to embed, so.. >>CLICK HERE FOR TEST VIDEO FROM BAO<< 

but here’s the Screen shot from the video Bao and I Crossstreamed 

Overall through our test, it worked really well with minimal lag and there were no disconnections, quality were much better than we thought and we hope that we could be replicated it during the class.

 

 

OBS Livestream Documentation

I Am Unable to embed the video here as I posted it directly to the NTU OSS Facebook Group, Hence.. >> CLICK HERE FOR THE VIDEO IN NEW TAB<<

Initially I wanted to tackle on the idea of multi-tasking by having doing many task simultaneously while on live, but after watching BOLD3RRR by Jon Cates, It gave me an idea of having multiple prerecorded videos in the live stream and produce a piece that is slightly chaotic due to the amount of events happening on the screen of the viewer and with sounds from the recordings disrupting my live speech. Originally I wanted to have multiple cameras, one filming me from the front, others will film from other angles like from the back of my head, side view and such, however I’m unable to find my additional webcams I had. So I resorted to having a share screen from my phone whereas my phone is usually unlocked and in the “auto play mode” of some sort of game and recently it’s Pokemon Go so I wanted to show it as part of my life.

Before the stream

I’ve recorded 3 grid of 15 minutes each on different days but I wore the same shirt to give a illusion that it all happened at the same time. Since I’m using my desktop which does not have a webcam installed(my laptop keep crashing), I stuck the USB camera onto a small tripod and placed it in front of me.

In my 10 minute live stream

As I said, I will talk more after the first class assignment,

Note to self: I should talk more in the live video.
-Zi Feng, 21 Aug 2017.

Although I am really bad in English and don’t enunciate words properly, I tried to narrate like living in a third space and interacting with the recordings which I dragged myself in the third space to describe what’s happening on the screen, I remembered that during our Adobe Connect lesson that when the camera is flipped, I had a hard time coordinating my movement so I flipped the live camera(only the live is flipped) to make it a mirror. Also, I am not sure if there audience but went ahead and asked if the audience could hear me, Makoto replied but I only saw the reply about 5 minutes later. (Should check comments more frequently, now I know)
“Live” me flying over to point at “third space” me

The reason that I used this Youtube video from TrainerTips was because it was his first live stream of the series and I was watching and recording it while he was on live. The basic idea is to use a Live streaming video streaming me doing things Live in my Live stream, its like a Live-Streamception.

And then something happened as mentioned by Makoto when he was an audience during the live stream.The top right(pre-recorded) and bottom right(live) goes to the desktop at around the same time and you can see the changes that happened on my desktop within that few days.

As mentioned by Alvin’s comment in my previous post, Gesture is an important factor in communication so I tried to incorporate hand movements into the live stream when I was explaining about something. I was talking about how Korean manga is usually in a long strip format but the website which I read it(MangaFox) cut it into a page format.

Throughout the 10 minute of live, I am kind of lost and got mind blank multiple times, guess this is the cons of going live but also the beauty of it- the imperfections in realtime, I also asked the audience if there is anything they could recommend me to do and I think there were no audience during that point of time so I ended the stream soon after.

Lastly, I think that the future live streams will be posted to my timeline and then shared to the OSS Facebook group because posting directly to the OSS group prevented me from showing the video in this post as the OSS Facebook group is a closed group.

Special Thanks to Makoto and CherSee as they were my live audience and reacted to me during the live stream.Thank you!!! =D

 

Typebot : Lim Su Hwee & Ong Zi Feng

This was a great project for us to learn about how to program a servo to move, basically for this project, we had some failure as but the end result works far better than what we expected. Our first laser cut was was too long and we re-cut them together with the rest of the parts.

And then came our Ver1 Typebot that is almost made from MDF with the finger that we knew it was too long(the marking was the length we needed)

the base of the rotation serco were too big and “wrist” were too short so we couldn’t get it to revolve 180 degree due to the size error and we went into making the Version 2.

This was made into our final Typebot as the length were just nice to press the nearest(Spacebar) and the furthest button (Escape), which was what we needed as we wanted to make the Typebot to possibly type all the letters.

The base of the Typebot was sticky tacked to the base of the keyboard to fix make sure that it will not shift around from the time I calibrate each letter in the Arduino IDE to the completion of this project.

Basically our Arduino code consist of 2 “if” function which are triggered by 2 button. Button 1 will reset all the servo to the original position as we found out that when uploading the code to Arduino, servo 2 will goes all the way to 180, so to prevent it from pushing all our parts to breakage, we will reset the position before uploading so the maximum it will move is to only touch the table hence all our parts will be safe.

Button 2 will activate the code and help me in getting the values for each motor by allowing be to repeat the movement just by clicking the Button2. For the Typebot to press one letter, there will be 6 values for a smooth movement from a letter to the next – 3 values for Servo1,2,3 to travel to the position above the letter without dragging over other keys and 3 values for Servo1,2,3 to press the letter.

The rest will be just trail and error to get the values for all those letters.

I am Bonnie, The Next Pokemon Master. (Alter Ego/Video Double)

My First idea Diden’t work, but I’ll do documentation on it….

It took me a long time to think of someone to base my Alter ego on, I really wanted someone who is very different from me, relatively well known and have some comical effect, and after a long period of researching what Alter Ego is(from youtube), someone flashed across my mind….
KIM….
KIM….
KIM JONG UN.

Yes. This.Image result for kim jong unNot to be disrespectful to the Respectable Supreme Leader Of North Korea. I kind of love him and thought that I could draw some similarity between us…. Black hair with similar hairstyle, Asian, double eyelid, protruding ears, I may be able to pull off some similarity and could impersonate him with some a lot of makeup prosthetic fats and makeup on, some tape on the eye(classical stereotypical joke). First I will get my hair slightly shorter.Hair cut (sideburn fade) – Done

Next, Style my hair:
Roughly~ will put more gel to press it down after the makeup, Done for now.

Next is to cover my thick eyebrows… I’ve Tried Makeup(Foundation,Cover base, Consealer and BB cream, I don’t know what they does and all seemed to be the same thing but I was told which order to apply them) which I borrowed from Su Hwee and it doesn’t work as my brows are too protruding and the makeup does not hold them down. So I hair gel-ed my eyebrow down and use Plasticine (I blended many colors to produce my skin tone) mixed with Vaseline to give it a mud like consistency and applied over my eyebrow, which I thought it would work.
I’ll makeup over it and draw fake Kim Jong Un brows later.

Now some Fake Cheek Fats:
I thought it look OK now as I should be applying makeup to my whole face later to cover the noticeable color difference.

And then comes the Fake Double Chin:
Fake Double chin supported by using metal wires within the plasticine and with rubber bands holding it at the back of my head, but then…..

FAILURE DISCLOSE!

Up till here, everything look promising… until I tried to blend the Fake Double Chin onto my face using the Plasticine-Vaseline mud mix.. it does not stick to my face if I move even a tiny bit. So I removed the idea of double chin and proceed to the makeup.

Expectation:
Image result for kim jong un impersonation
This is a Kim Jung Un Impersonator Kim Jung Um

 

Reality:
My eyebrow cover fell off while I was finishing with the make up, the Fake Double Chin doesn’t work, I look more like a (failed)Geisha than Kim Jung Un……
I am shook and decided to give up on this idea.

 

And the comes Bonnie.

Bonnie is a Female Pokemon Trainer from the Kanto region of Japan. Trying her best to become a Pokemon Master in the future, She had received her first Pokemon – Bulbasaur 3 days ago from Professor Oak and is currently on a journey to Pewter City on her quest to defeat all 8 Pokemon Gym leaders to earn the right to challenge the best in the region- The Elite Four.

I am Bonnie, a Pokemon trainer from Japan. I want to be the very best like no one ever was, to catch them is my real test, to train them is my cause. This is a Alter Ego project for assignment 2, sorry but I hope you don't get cancer from watching/hearing this.

Posted by ZiFeng Ong on Wednesday, 23 August 2017

Why did I decided to do this weird thing?

First, Why a girl with weird voice?
I wanted to have an alter ego of myself as someone I’ll never be, biologically and psychologically speaking, I will never be a girl but I thought it would be really funny to be a girl temporary, at least in the digital space.
Aaaand about the annoying-feel-like-punching-cancerous voice, I am seriously sorry, that’s the best I can do, if I retake 5 time, 5 times you will want to punch me. But I told myself after the previous live video that I will try to speak more in the video so Bonnie spoke for me.

And then why a Pokemon Trainer?
As the extension of the previous reason, someone I’ll never be.
Pokemon doesn’t exist regardless how much the Pokemon community wanted it, they are only virtual. It was my childhood game, I’ve played almost all of Pokemon’s main series and still plays Pokemon GO now, it’s a childhood fantasy that still lives within me- Travelling, Exploring, catch Pokemon, breed Pokemon, meet new people, fight them, take their money after beating them and be the best like no one ever was.

Japanese?
Japan was my dream destination since young so it’s still the number one country I want to visit. Nipon Banzai!

What’s up with the setting?
The location was set to be somewhere grassy as there need to be tall grass for the wild Pokemon to appear plus Bonnie is on a journey to the Pewter City. I’ve been to this place 2 years ago, both side were tall grass and apparently they chopped off one side now and Bonnie’s sad(lesser wild Pokemon for her).

It is a good place to film this as there will only be passerby occasionally. There’s basically nothing there as it was a train track which stopped working in 2011 and got removed afterwards, so its good for me to do this man-in-wig-blasting-Pokemon-music-shouting-go-Bulbasaur-in-a-cancerous-voice thingy.
I got the oldwig from my mother and that’s the only one I could get, the cap is a Pokemon Go- Team Valor cap, the orange hoodie and the headphone was to give Bonnie the anime feel.
If you watch it without voice, its kind of good actually, and this was from a NG try.. I did a few tries and the one I uploaded was the best… just imagine how bad cringey was the rest.

Best part of this 1 min live video…

The video was SOOOOO bad Cringey to a extend that it might be good.

And this is the first time I saw this in my facebook feed cos I don’t have many friends…..

 

So if you happened to stay till the end of this long post, here’s a bonus photoshopped photo for you.

A picture speaks a thousand words, but with Photoshop, it tells a thousand lies.

 

Real Time Aggregation.

 

15 min of randomness in adm

Posted by ZiFeng Ong on Thursday, 17 August 2017

Before the Live Video:

This was the first time I did Facebook Live video and I felt like a cave-man that doesn’t know how does it even work, I don’t even know how set my profile to public since I’ve set it to private years ago, I had, however, took part as an audience for the Live video of my friends and kind of like it due to the fact that people reacted almost instantly on the comments I’ve wrote. But the idea of going live on Facebook was really scary for me as I did not have the confidence to produce quality video which people will like, what if like there is totally no viewers? And also there are people who I am not very well acquainted with in my friend list and I don’t feel good putting the live video where they will probably not get what is going on. But Oh well~ What needs to be done must be done.
*clicks the red button*

During the Live Video:

At the start of the live video, I was really lost and did not know what to do so I followed my classmate out of the class room and was feeling weird as my friends are all taking happily to the phone but I’ve got nothing to say so I only filmed them in silent. The anxiety of putting myself on the web Live slowly dwindle down as soon as I saw our IM juniors, since they are from IM, it feel like there is a connection with them just because I knew they will be doing this the next year, just like how I saw the Senior Nathanael did it last year.

 

And then, I’m surprise that my first viewer on this live video was also Senior Nathanael, I’m touched that at least someone was watching so I went to say hi to him in the video, at this point of time, I did not know about the function to switch the camera(because I’m a caveman) so I turn the phone physically to show my face, I had no intend to show my face at all as I planned to just film what is happening without showing myself but it just happened naturally.

After me exposing myself in the video(2:23), it feels OK since I’ve did it once and broken the barrier of videoing in a third person, suddenly my phone became something which I am interacting with, (so instead of me using as my phone to record and tell a story, it developed into me talking to the phone and the phone just extended itself from “part of me” into “a separate entity of me”. which is really bizarre as all I did was to show myself in the video and my perspective changed so much.)

After going around looking at what the second year was doing and semi-introducing what I was doing and filming others, it came to a point that I started to do random things and became numb on the fact that people will judge me while I am on live(my anxiety before the start of the Live video), I think this is partly because:
1) People around me were doing the same thing.
2) I’ve did it for a couple of minute and slowly getting used to it.
3) The pace of live video was fast and there wasn’t time to pre-think what to do.
4) The viewers were commenting on random events which gave me a feeling that I am not alone.
5) I felt like I have some responsibility in entertaining the viewers.

Therefore I did some random(disturbing) acts just because I could.(Just to clarify, I don’t go around squeezing people’s butt in real life)

I thought it was funny, and now looking back, its still kind of funny albeit the creepy movements. Just what the heck am I doing. LOLLL

And then I proceed to do normal activities like walking around, talking to people and trying to introduce ADM to the viewers whom are not from ADM like my Ex-classmates and such.


I also really like this part where I was filming what CherSee was Filming and he was on the front camera while I was at the back camera so I could see myself in his screen and I am recording myself recording myself like a video-inception (left), but from the video which he uploaded(right), its only a one way video which he only shoots my face trying to get into the center of the frame while filming him. This is really mind boggling and cool in its own way as both of us are having live videoing it feel like it is a real-time magic or something.

At the end of 15 minute while I was walking back, I went back to the IM Junior table and I only notice the difference when I rewatched the video. I was filming myself!! Comparing to when I just started this live video where I was just filming the juniors, Now I am in the video showing myself to the public. I was talking much more in comparison. (At the start, I was just waving to them without saying Hello and only briefly reply in short sentence about the live video, and towards the end, I am just talking aimlessly.)
*Thanks Bridgel, Tisya and Sylvester for entertaining me.*

At the end of the video, I got a slight panic when I stopped the video as I am afraid that I would do something wrong which accidentally delete the footage since it was live, there is no way which I could replicate it again if it was deleted so somehow, so a live video felt more precious to me than any other video I took.

After the Live Video:

Prof Randall showed us the 4×3 grid video wall of the with 12 of our videos playing at the same time, I love the way that everything overlapped but the non of the video’s time frame was in parallel (the same exact event happened at different timing on the video wall) and it is totally uncoordinated, in a sense, it is chaos, but the rhythm is there within the chaotic mass which made it much more interesting than just looking at one single video at once. The visual and audio of all the 12 video was overwhelming and just when I am focusing on a single video within the video wall, suddenly I heard something interesting happening and I will glance around to find which video produced the sound as there must be something interesting happening in it, this gave me a sense of treasure hunting.

In Conclusion

I love the way that our individual 15 minute effort was placed together to form “something greater than yourself ” piece of work. This 15 minutes of live video was really fun and enriching, it somehow changed me and gave me some confident in the future Live video that I will be doing. At least I won’t start with the Live video with anxiety and getting lost right after I clicked the red button.

 

Note to self: I should talk more in the live video.