inFORM is an amazing interactive display that was developed at the MIT Media Lab. This ‘Dynamic Shape Display’ uses a Kinect Camera to obtain motion capture data from the user and actuators to move the prisms protruding from the surface. Together, they allow the user to interact with and manipulate the physical world at a distance. The demos in the video show the various applications of the inFORM, so it is obvious that this device has a number of uses; it would be interesting to see how devices similar to this can be used for medical purposes or others requiring heavy tangible interaction. This demonstrated ability to remotely interact with a physical object brings me to the next project, which uses the notion of remote interaction in a simple yet effective way:

Roly Poly is a paired device that brings couples in long-distance relationships a little closer by enabling them to feel each other’s physical presence. Each user has a personal egg that is ‘partnered’ with another Roly Poly egg that moves in synchronization with it–this means that if a person on one end were to tilt their egg, their partner’s egg would mimic the motion in real-time. The egg is still in its development stages, so I’m not really sure whether it works nearly as effectively as they intend it to. For the final product, I would like to see how they can push (pun unintended) the concept further by adding a few more features–though its simplicity is what gives the egg its appeal. Regardless, it is an interesting, poetic concept that I hope will come into fruition in the near future.

Speaking of devices used in long-distance relationships, Pillow Talk is one such project that attempts to “network long distance lovers”. Each person has a chest sensor attached to a band around their waist that is paired with a pillow, such that the pillow lights up when the person lies down. The concept is exactly the same as the one for the Roly Poly egg, but the approach is slightly different in that the ‘interactivity’ is not actually something that is intrinsic to the project (i.e. the project only ‘encourages’ [but does not ‘require’] the users to interact with the pillows in order to function (; ). I feel like in order to bring a stronger interactive element to the project, there should be a way for each person to know whether their partner is clutching their pillow / interacting with it in some way.

CV – http://rachelbinx.com/Data-Visualization-Senior-Thesis

The bottom project on this page shows how Rachel’s Curriculum Vitae has changed from 2006-2010 based on a few categories. For example, mathematics has always played a decent role in her CV, but music has come and gone over the years. She also breaks down specifics events in her life and how they contributed to certain parts of her CV, for example, she studied in Tokyo in 2009, which grew her language section of her CV. I think this is a very interesting and cool looking way of tracking your own professional life and to see how you have changed over the years.

Wind Map – http://bewitched.com/windmap.html

I remember coming across this project when it was first created in 2012. I was going through the links provided on the course blog and chanced upon it again. I remember spending a lot of time mesmerized over the patterns of the wind. There was something so elegant about the way the wind was mapped that I just had to share it here. Looking at it now, it is still a really neat project. However, I feel like it could have been a bit better implemented with its interactivity. The zoom in and pan is slow and clunky, and the only way to zoom out is through an “unzoom” buttom that appears on the left hand side of the webpage once you zoom in.

Digg Rings – http://www.chrisharrison.net/index.php/Visualizations/DiggRings

Digg Rings is a tree-ring like visualization of every top story on Digg in a one year period from May 2007 – 2008. Each ring in the tree has a colour that represents the category that the story was in. For example, blue is Gaming while purple is Entertainment. He created tree-rings for the whole year, as well as ones for individual days, days of the week and each month. I really like the look of the rings. I grew up around actual tree-rings so I think that it is cool that the idea is being used to represent other types of data. I don’t know if I would change anything about this, but if I would, I would add some interactivity to it. It would be neat to be able to click on each ring and go to the Digg article that it represented. However, I can see both technical (does the URL still exist?) and UI (the rings are really small) issues about that.

Looking through the list awhile ago I found three that jumped out at me. These where also due to me looking ahead to the future and what I would want to possibly use in my final project to create a fully interactive stage environment, centered around augmenting the world around the actor’s characterizations/movements.

ofxLeapMotion

This add-on caught my attention due to it’s fairly accurate and responsive nature. You can get very subtle details in the hand, that you just can’t get with a standard Kinect. This could be interesting if it where embedded into a set piece and allowed for actor to manipulate something in their environment with a simple gesture or swipe.

ofxSyphon

This one jumped out at me simply because we use syphon already so much in the Media department in the School of Drama. If I want to code anything in openFrameworks, I will definitely need to learn how to use this addon to allow us to use it with our mapping softwares of choice, or even other interfaces to allow further manipulation later in the pipeline.

ofxBox2d

This one seems interesting to me due to the formation of a mesh the acts as a boundary box for other meshes. This could prove useful to project things around the actor and make it so that they can still move/have control and the projected environment will manipulate to them.
As I said earlier, all of these are purely idea based, with me looking ahead to the final project….

I’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg when it comes to openFrameworks and looking to other’s for inspirations always gets me excited at the possibilities that can come with it to benefit my design process when creating/designing for the theatrical environment. The three below caught my attention because they all have ideas/concepts that I would possibly want to explore in the future (maybe for my final project?).

Puppet Parade:

This one catches my eye at the idea of virtual puppetry. It has long been an interest of mine to allow the actor to virtually control the puppet and have it augment out through projection mapping into a new environment. Thus allowing them to take a new form and personality altogether. This is a major step into that direction. The design of it also helps this project out. Since it is clean and stylized, they can get away with a simpler 3D model to manipulate live. This was smart planning on their part.

Mortal Engine: By Chunky Move:

I can’t confirm if this was done completely in openFrameworks, but I’ve seen many openFramework sketched that do something similar. This one is just a prime example of how well this concept can be accomplished. This also leads to my goal of having a fully interactive stage environment, where the actor is in complete control so they are not confined to the limits of the program.

Shutter Spot:

This one is a very interesting idea. To have the actor control the lights attributes with their actions would be a very interesting/cool concept to look into in the future. I also love what they have done with the sound responsiveness in this installation as well.

Looking through the visualizations of datasets, I was surprised by my findings. I was expecting something either monotone, or just plain “digital”. Which in some cases can look appealing or clean-cut. In return, I found that many of the visualization popped out at you with color, with organic wonder, and all around thought provoking visualizations that you can get lost in by the pure aesthetic alone.

The three that I really enjoyed were:

Mark Wattenberg’s Wind Map:

http://bewitched.com/windmap.html

In the wind map visualization, I was overwhelmed with the organic beauty made from the technical data used. The longer you stair at it the more you begin to unfold and find. It’s equivalent of looking at a Van Gogh painting… Getting lost in the push stokes of the data.

Pitch Interactive’s Flight Quest:

http://visualization.geblogs.com/visualization/flight-quest/

This one I found not only visually appealing and eye catching, but also fun to watch and interact with. I believe the design always helps capture an audience, and this one does just that. It draws you in visually and then keeps you with it’s simplistic design cues and clean animations. All-in-all, this one is one of my favorite’s from a design standpoint that meets and excels at keeping you engaged in the interaction.

Chris Harrison’s Amazon Map:

http://www.chrisharrison.net/index.php/Visualizations/AmazonMap

These also appealed to me from a visual standpoint. On first glance they reminded me of the classic animating technique of making color scripts for your movie to plan out the color cues/light changed per shot basis. This allows the animation to not only think about storyboarding the action, but the color as well to enhance the story’s emotion, setting, and plot being told. This actually works with this project taking color cues from different covers to create the visualizations. I would love to incorporate this idea into my quantitated selfie.

ofxMidi

http://github.com/danomatika/ofxMidi

MIDI is a requirement if you want to do anything that includes synthesizing notes/sounds via external VST Plugins. This is one of the few add-ons that I found to be well documented and Windows compatible/tested. I plan to use it to talk to my DAW (Ableton Live) and produce sounds while interacting with the user using OF.

ofxEVM:

http://github.com/yusuketomoto/ofxEvm

This plugin allows for Eulerian Video Magnification (EVM) which reveals temporal variations in a video stream impossible to see with the naked eye (http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/vidmag/). This powerful technique can be used to visualize the pulse rate, by just a video stream of the person and can also be used to estimate breathing rate etc. I planned to use this along with ofxBeat/ofxBeatTracking to see if there is any relation between our pulse rate and the beat of music we prefer listening to- so far, haven’t been able to run this plugin successfully.

ofxBeat/ofxBeatTracking

http://github.com/zenwerk/ofxBeatTracking

http://github.com/darrenmothersele/ofxBeat

These plugins can be used to detect the BPM of an audio stream, or the BPM of various frequency bands within the spectrum. Sadly, documentation does not exist anymore (for ofxBeatTracking). I was able to run ofxBeat but the results weren’t as good as expected- nevertheless, tweaking the parameters might do the trick.

Auto Smiley

by Theo Watso

The Auto Smiley is “lazy like a fox” app (even the video is a quick edit!). It uses OF and MPI Search for smile detection and auto types a smiley whenever you smile. It can be used anywhere you can put your cursor in and type. No fake smiles now, each smiley comes naturally! That’s what I liked. To add on, we could make an app that does a particular number of emotions- although the other emotions have to be exaggerated for the system to recognize them. A sad face, a smile with your tongue out or a wink: they’re not as easy to detect as a laugh/smile.

Simple Harmonic Motion #5 Excerpt

by Memo Akten

We’ve all, at some point, played with a pendulum in Physics 101. This is the same concept, but portrayed on an entirely different platform. Memo Akten creates what he calls ‘agents’ that are assigned a simple function. They follow a simple pattern repetitive pattern, which produces visuals and sound- when these patterns are tuned right, it results in the awesome visualizations we see above. Akten believes in creating complexity from simplicity. You can find out more details at http://www.memo.tv/simple-harmonic-motion/

The Eyewriter

This is an ‘Eyewriting’ system developed by people from OpenFrameworks, Free Art & Technology (FAT), Graffiti Research Lab and The Embeling group. It enables ALS patients to use their eye moments to draw and color graffiti as well to control a laptop by using a simple DIY hardware which costs under $50. A remarkable application that has opened doors to what they call as ‘Eye Art’. To me, this project demonstrates the power of open-source research, DIY building and creativity. You can read the full story here, or even make our own Eyewriter: http://eyewriter.org/