[ AOS ] Art is Open Source » digital culture

Wearing Emotions by FakePress, presented at the IV10 conference in London, July 2010

admin — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 08:24:47 +0000

Wearing Emotions by FakePress, presented at the IV10 conference in London, July 2010 from salvatore iaconesi on Vimeo.

The video shows the presentation of the paper titled “Wearing Emotions: Physical representation and visualization of human emotions using wearable technologies” presented at the IV10 (Information Visualization 2010) conference at South Bank‘s college in London, on July 26th, 2010.

Wearing Emotions by FakePress, presented at the IV10 conference in London, July 2010

View more presentations from salvatore iaconesi.

The paper and presentation describe a research process focused on the scientific research, design and implementation of wearable devices able to display human emotions – be them individual, group or global – on physical bodies.
The devices created in the process have been used to create 3 artistic performances as both proofs of concepts and as innovative forms of artistic and aesthetic expression: Talkers performance, OneAvatar and Conference Biofeedback.

the slides relative to the presentation can be found here:
http://www.slideshare.net/xdxd/wearing-emotions-sifppresentation

the video can be found here:

http://vimeo.com/13779500

or here

http://www.archive.org/details/WearingEmotionsByFakepressPresentedAtTheIv10ConferenceInLondonJuly

on Art is Open Source:

http://www.artisopensource.net/2010/07/31/wearing-emotions-by-fakepress-presented-at-the-iv10-conference-in-london-july-2010/

OneAvatar, wearable technologies connecting body and avatar

Reference links:

the IV10 conference website:
http://www.graphicslink.co.uk/IV10/

Art is Open Source:
http://www.artisopensource.net/

FakePress:
http://www.fakepress.it/

Talkers Performance:
http://www.artisopensource.net/talkers/

OneAvatar:
http://www.artisopensource.net/OneAvatar/

Conference Biofeedback:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/xdxd_vs_xdxd/sets/72157622816765253/

Squatting Supermarkets, new interfaces and project development

admin — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 14:49:14 +0000

A new interface for the squatting supermarkets installation was featured recently at the SMIR project.

Traditional products were added to the system, documenting their history, sustainable production processes and ecologic impacts.

by FakePress, Art is Open Source

produced by SMIR project, Marcovaldo association and Share Festival

Squatting Supermarkets

Toys++ at ICALT in Tunisia

admin — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 14:00:25 +0000

Art is Open Source, together with FakePress have recently participated at the ICALT conference, International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies. We presented Toys++, an augmented reality system allowing you to apply digital contents to the toys people (and especially children) play with, and to visualize them while you assemble them.

Toys++ at ICALT, example representations

The system will soon be released, check out the FakePress website to stay updated on this.

Here is the PDF of the poster we presented at the conference.

Poster of Toys++ presented at ICALTin sousse, tunisia

Squatting supermarkets back in Mondovì

admin — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 06:38:49 +0000

Just a quick note: AOS and FakePress will be in Mondovì from the 15th to the 19th of july for another edition of SMIR project.

We will present a new version of the Squatting Supermarkets installation using augmented reality and computer vision technologies to introduce critical practices for consumers promoting sustainability, ecology and ethnographic narratives using ubiquitous technologies.

More info here

http://www.smirproject.eu/mondovi/?p=24&lang=it

and a detailed report really soon.

a video Atlante di Roma / Atlas of Rome

admin — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 09:39:56 +0000

our friend and magician filmmaker Gianmarco Bonavolontà produced this video of the Atlas we produced for the Festa dell’Architettura a few days ago, a large scale interactive installation for public spaces.

Atlante di Roma / Atlas of Rome from gimbo on Vimeo.

Enjoy!

Atlante di Roma / Atlas of Rome

design by FakePress

implementation by Art is Open Source

curated by Paolo Valente

How to make a presentation with Augmented Reality using Processing

admin — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 00:14:50 +0000

AT IAR2010 we did our presentation using a simple-simple software which I wrote using Processing.

FakePress at IAR2010

The software was written in a hurry in a single afternoon, so it turned out not being a general purpose utility, and being more a single-shot program usable to address that single presentation.

Nonetheless people actually enjoyed the presentation and the way we were using fiducial markers, and many of the people at the event were asking me if I could give them the software.

So I thought of publishing it over here so that anyone interested could take a look.

one of our AR slides

Again: it is very basic but you can use it as some sort of tutorial to get you started with AR using Processing.

And, so back to business: here is the zip containing the sources.

Source code of the software used for the AR presentation

The processing sketch basically uses content in your data directory and attaches them to fiducial markers so that when you hold up a marker to the camera, the corresponding content is shown.

(Note: the previous sentence turned out not being clear enough; it means that if you already don’t have a “data” directory setup in your processing sketch directory, you should create one and place your contents in there, according to what is explained in the rest of the post :) )

But let’s start from the beginning.

The program uses the TUIO library for processing. That means that before starting your presentation you need to start up the TUIO server so that it can connect to your webcam and start tracking the markers that enter/exit the field of view. I used the reactivision server, as it’s simple to install (you don’t actually need to install it, but merely unzip it to your hard drive) and has wide support for all platforms.

One issue I needed to address was that when reactivision is turned on it locks your webcam, not letting you use it inside your Processing sketch. So I used an additional webcam mounted on top of my monitor so that it is aligned to the one that is built in the frame of my laptop, thus obtaining basically the same point of view from both webcams. (a trick for OSX users: not many external USB webcams are mac-friendly, I bypassed this problem by using this little software that basically turns many models of USB webcams into mac-friendly ones).

two webcams on my mac

So: one camera used in reactivision and the other one used in Processing.

The webcam capture in Processing was done using the OpenCV framework and processing library.

So, let’s go through the source code a bit, so that I can explain the mess inside it :)

(again, sorry for the chaotic coding: it was all done in a few hours just for the conference, hope you find it useful anyway).

The main idea is that each marker has an ID (the reactivision classical amoeba markers have numeric IDs, and we used them). Each marker triggers a content named with its ID (for example marker with ID 20 could trigger the “20.mov” video file in your sketch’s data directory).

first of all we load the required libraries:

( Minim, to play sounds )

import ddf.minim.*;

import ddf.minim.signals.*;

import ddf.minim.analysis.*;

import ddf.minim.effects.*;

( OpenCV for webcam capture )

import hypermedia.video.*;

(the standard Processing video library to play videos)

import processing.video.*;

(the TUIO library to connect to the reactivision server)

import TUIO.*;

In the variables definitions section at the top of the coded I created one variable for each content: a Movie variable for each movie, an AudioPlayer variable for each sound, and a PImage variable for each image.

The variables are named against the marker ID that triggers the related content.

For the sake of bad programming, i pre-loaded all the contents up, so that they would be all in memory and just be triggered when needed during the presentations.

Much better strategies can be used, but this is the way you’ll find it done in the example. It actually is the best solution for responsiveness of your presentation, but it doesn’t work so well if you plan on presenting a lot of AR slides: in this case you should load content only when it’s needed: you’ll have a short lag when doing this, but there’s also ways in which you can prevent it, for example by preloading only the previous/next slides of the currently shown one, or tricks like that.

I won’t go through all the lines of code, but only highlight the key ones.

A java Hashtable is used in the software to store the status of the various contents: either playing or not playing.

The setup() method is used to start everything up and to preload the content using the initContent() method.

In this last method you will find the commands needed to load the various contents from your data directory. (Note: this is hardcoded in the source, so you will need either to customize it to your needs or to have movies and images exactly as i associated them to IDs)

Let’s see how various contents are loaded:

a Movie:

m4= new Movie(this, “4.mov”,30);

m4.loop();

m4.speed(0);

here I am loading a movie and putting it to sleep by setting its speed to 0. This is the only way I found to stop a movie and its audio using the Processing video library (some sort of but seems to be present in its stop and pause methods). When triggered by the corresponding fiducial marker we will set the speed back to 1 for playback.

for Images, the basic PImage is used:

p0 = loadImage(“p0.png”);

for Sounds, we use Minim’s loaders:

s7 = minim.loadFile(“7.wav”, 2048);

The software implements TUIO callbacks to react to fiducial markers being placed in front of the camera.

In the addTuioObject method, for example, we first catch the new objects in the field of view:

String sid = “” + tobj.getSymbolID();

and then we use the symbol ID to trigger the playing state on the hashtable:

String pstate = (String) playing.get( sid );

if(pstate.equals(“N”)){

playing.put(sid,”S”);

… (it goes on with an infinite length of IF..ELSE statements to check which content must be triggered)

}

In the removeTuioObject method, called by the TUIO library when a fiducial marker leaves the field of vision,we do exactly the opposite, turning off the content related to the marker that just left the field of vision.

Everything else takes place in the draw() method of the sketch.

First of all, the camera input is read and displayed (the second camera, to provide a background to our AR slides content):

opencv.read();

image( opencv.image(), 0, 0 );

Then the getTuioObjects() method offered by the TUIO library is used to handle, one by one, the playing of the contents related to the in-sight markers:

Vector tuioObjectList = tuioClient.getTuioObjects();

for (int i=0;i

TuioObject tobj = (TuioObject)tuioObjectList.elementAt(i);

String sid = “” + tobj.getSymbolID();

if(playing.get( sid )==null ){

playing.put(sid,”N”);

}

String pstate = (String) playing.get( sid );

… (goes on checking which content needs to be played)..

}

Each TuioObject instance contains both a session ID and a marker ID, allowing you to understand what fiducial marker is on screen, and, by comparing previous session IDs that you might have recorded, to find out if we’re dealing with a new display of that marker, or if it’s the continuation of a previous one.

When we decide what to do with the marker, we can use the TuioObject‘s getScreenX() and getScreenY() methods to find out where on screen we need to display the content, and use these coordinates to show our images/movies…

For example at the lines like this one:

image(p0,tobj.getScreenX(width)-ww/2,tobj.getScreenY(height)-hh/2,ww,hh);

in which the coordinates are used to center an image on the marker.

And that’s just about all there is to it! :)

feel free to contact or comment if you find any problem or have any doubt.

AOS and FakePress present “Critical AR Ensemble” at IAR2010

admin — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 11:30:23 +0000

IAR2010

Art is Open Source and FakePress participated to IAR2010, the first italian event totally dedicated to the themes of Augmented Reality, organized by the folks at JoinPad at the Milan headquarters of the Hub.

AOS @ IAR2010

The event was truly interesting as it covered a wide range of themes and approaches. I must say that I am quite interested in the efforts that marketing is putting on Augmented Reality (AR). It reminds me a lot of the hype that had developed a couple of years ago on proximity marketing and bluetooth.

While the idea of being able to interact with “users” according to their position and to the possibility of delivering contextualized, relevant content just-in-place and just-in-time is quite fascinating and attractive, lots of issues arised in practical applications of proximity marketing: the availability and compatibility of devices, user habits, usability, accessibility, the quality of content to be delivered, invasiveness, responsiveness, interactivity.

the crowd at the HUB Milan

With AR we have gone way beyond those problems, but something’s still missing and, on the other side, people haven’t yet figured out exactly what they want from AR, and how they want it.

Good things first: IAR2010 has been a wonderful experience. Before and during the setup and at the afterparty we had the chance to chat with some really wonderful and creative people who are developing ideas and projects that have AR components in perspectives that encompass wide range of interests and matters.

Mauro Rubin @ IAR2010

Using the presentations as a reference, the first that comes up to mind is Simone Cortesi of OpenStreetMap. With OSM a radical approach is being persued, focused on the creation of a stack of tools collaboratively building a software and content platform and, on the content side, to truly implement a distributed operative environmet which enables for a real stratification of information on the “real” world. Projects such as OSM are truly interesting in that they actually enable people to do something that people are doing since the dawn of times: add meaning and information to the world around them. OSM allows you doing it on a global scale by providing the geographic foundation and by allowing you to freely build on it.

This is a focal point, and it’s the main reason behind me not being *very* excited about the marketing aspects of AR.

With AR we are dealing with a possible paradigm shift: the possibility to making digital, multimedia information accessible directly from the analog physical world.

This is a breathtaking possibility that has been matched, recently, only by the researches on digital and generative fabrication. While this latter model describes a complete reinvention of manufacturing processes (post-post-industry: you bring manufacturing plants at home, you work on opensourced models that you can use/modify and 3d-print) rethinking from the base the ideas of patents, distribution, storage, sustainability, ecology, AR completely (potentially) reinvents the idea of communication, bringing the power of creating information, meaning, symbols, codes and interactions directly to the people, directly in the places/times they walk, live, work, have fun.

This possibility potentially confronts the current hyerarchies and models of communication and information, further enhancing the ones that are currently available through the internet. AR potentially brings the possibility to generate, disseminate and distribute content and information to the people in the physical world, far from their monitors, far from “I Like” buttons and “tweet this” badges.

This is why we named ur contribution to IAR2010 Critical AR Ensemble.

Critical Art Ensemble was a group creating “molecular interventions and semiotic shocks that collectively could diminish the rising intensity of authoritarian culture”. Their work on media and experimentations on the borders and frontiers of technology, biotechnology and extreme practices is something that we feel very significative in contemporary times.

We borrowed their name, turining it into Critical AR Ensemble, to suggest how Augmented Reality can be thought of as a new space in which to create such “interventions and semiotic shocks”. With AR we imagine a world in which codes can be broken down, infliltrated, reinvented, directly from the people, directly from streets, bodies, objects, times and places, reinventing public spaces, private ones, relations, and communications.

There are technical and conceptual issues to be assessed in all this.

Technically, AR is still very cumbersome: devices, displays, percision, computer vision… everything is not what we would like to have. Too slow, too limited, too reliant on markers.

Conceptually, AR is being mostly used as a next-step advertisment or as a next-step yellow pages. Which is something, but something that resembles using a nuke to kill a fly.

One thing must be said in favor of marketing practices experimenting with AR: they are fast! There’s a dozen new experiments each day: markers on magazines, on cards, on totems, on cars, on tshirts, everywhere. With this progression going on we will soon have critical masses of know-how that will possibly form a foundation for further researchers.

But the most interesting things going on in AR are quite far from marketing. Social networks, art, architecture, sustainability, ecology, disabilities, multi-cultural practices, alternative business models, activism. People reinventing socialization; aesthetics; the spaces we walk through; the places in which we spend our time; the effects of our actions on the world; the possibility to inform ourselves on the products and services we use; the accessibility of the world for people who are not able to hear or see; the possibility to open up dialogues among multiple cultures and to make them interact and coexist; the possibility to create really new business models; the posibility to criticize, express ourselves, promote our autonomies, claim our share of the world.

These are areas in which AR is being researched on with incredible results, and the ones that I personally am most excited about.

Together with FakePress we are approaching these areas of intervention from the point of view of a next-step publishing house.

FakePress next step publishing

What will a publishing house that is aware of these possibilities look like?

We actually don’t know, yet, just as anyone else in these times and conditions. But we’re experimenting on our educated guesses.

“Publishing” will be (and already is) a key term in the near future. Global scale meltin-pots, remixing, mashing-ups, bashing, distracting, assembling, disassembling, fabbing, performing, wearing, touching, retouching. Messing it all up and bringing it back to a state of calm for the next two seconds and then starting up once again with the mashup. A continuous fluid unstable state of remix. Incredibly creative. But also very far from the word “strategy” as we know it. Different skills, methodologies, ambitions and, most of all, imaginaries are required.

Wrapping up: IAR2010 was a wonderful experience. We saw some innovative experiments, some a-bit-less-innovative ones, but focused on the high levels of quality and accessibility designed for the masses, some decent technical solutions, some really interesting theoretical approaches, some great visions, some incredible efforts and, most of all, a wonderful level of curiosity, a definite will to listen to all the available perspectives and a remarkable dedication to being open and accessible, with the clear objective of creating interconnections and collaborations.

Atlante di Roma / Atlas of Rome

admin — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 18:10:11 +0000

[ ITALIAN ]

l’Atlante è un sistema aperto che raccoglie visioni sulla città. Progetti, azioni, pubblicazioni, siti web, teorie. Tutto ciò può essere incluso nell’atlante per creare uno spazio di informazione condivisa.

L’Atlante vive a cavallo dello spazio digitale e di quello fisico.

Atlante delle visioni

Sul web, un sistema aperto permette di inserire le proprie visioni e di consultare quelle presenti sul territorio, nel tempo e nello spazio semantico delle tematiche.

Nello spazio fisico l’Atlante si manifesta come una grande installazione pensata per essere inserita nello spazio pubblico. Qui le persone possono consultare l’Atlante sia osservandone le grandi rappresentazioni infoestetiche, sia utilizzando degli schermi multitouch che permettono di interagire direttamente con la superficie proiettiva cercando le informazioni secondo la navigazione per categorie e tag.

Le mura degli spazi pubblici si animano, comunicando la stratificazione di molteplici punti di vista, idee, progettualità, eventi e voci che definiscono la vita della città, le sue emozioni, i suoi desideri.

L’Atlante è un progetto aperto, istanziato per la prima volta per la città di Roma, dove è nato sotto la cura di Paolo Valente e commissionato dall’Ordine degli Architetti per la Festa dell’Architettura del 2010 (Index Urbis http://www.indexurbis.it/ ) con il nome di Atlante di Roma, con la fondamentale collaborazione dell’Assessorato alla Comunicazione e alle Politiche Culturali del Comune di Roma.

Il progetto si fonda sulla creazione di un complesso network di istituzioni, professionisti, accademici, e di soggetti che esprimono o raccontano nel loro operare quotidiano le visioni sulla vita e sulle possibili evoluzioni delle città, delle relazioni e interazioni tra i loro abitanti, dell’evoluzione degli spazi pubblici, dell’informazione e dell’interazione sociale.

L’esperienza si estenderà, nei prossimi mesi, ad altre città sia in Italia che nel resto del mondo.

[ ENGLISH ]

The Atlas is an open system gathering visions on the city. Projects, actions, publications, web sites, theories. Everything can be included in the atlas to create a shared information space.

The Atlas lives across digital and physical spaces.

On the web, an open system is used to add visions and to access the ones that are already present through territory, time and the semantic space.

In the physical space, the Atlas is a large scale installation designed for public spaces. Here people can access the shared information either visually, by observing the 35 meter wide information aesthetics, or they can directly interact with information by using multitouch screens allowing direct connection to the projected surface, browsing information through categories, territories and times.

The walls of the public spaces animate themselves, communicating the stratification of the multiple points of view, ideas, projects, events and voices that define the life of the city, its emotions, its desires and strategies.

The Atlas is an open project, instantiated for the first time in the city of Rome, where it has been curated by Paolo Valente and commissioned by the Order of the Architects for the Festa dell’Architettura 2010 ( Index Urbis http://www.indexurbis.it/ ) with the name “Atlante di Roma”, with the fundamental collaboration of the Council for Communication and Cultural Policies of the City of Rome.

The project is based on the creation of a complex network of institutions, professionals, academics and other subjects expressing or telling the visions on the life and on the possible evolutions of the city, of the relations and interactions among its citizens, of public spaces, of information and social interaction.

The experience will be replicated, during the next months, in other cities both in Italy and in the rest of the world.

——-

CREDITS

——-

a cura di / curated by:

Paolo Valente

Progettazione / Project:

FakePress ( http://www.fakepress.it )

Realizzazione / Implementation:

Art is Open Source ( http://www.artisopensource.net )

Interaction design, experience design, information aesthetics, sound & environment design:

Salvatore Iaconesi

Information architecture e network politics:

Oriana Persico

con la collaborazione di / with the collaboration of:

Alessandro Tartaglia

il team tecnico del partner technologico AVSet, a cui va un ringraziamento speciale, è composto da / the technical team of our technological partner AVSet, to whom goes a special thanks, is composed by :

Mauro Iezzi

Marco De Angelis

Gianluca Faustini

Maurizio Muglia

e

Bruno De Matteis

un ringraziamento speciale per / special thanks to:

Monica Scanu e Alessandro Ferrante per la creation del network legato alla rete museale del Comune di Roma e per le Accademie e gli Istituti Internazionali di Cultura di Roma / for the creation of the network of the museums of the City of Rome and for the Academies and International Cultural Institutes of Rome

L’Ordine degli Architetti Pianificatori Paesaggisti e Conservatori di Roma e Provincia http://www.architettiroma.it/

Festa dell’Architettura ( http://www.indexurbis.it)

Cultura Internazionale Roma ( http://culturainternazionale.wordpress.com )

Archiblog ( http://www.archiblog.it )

Performing Media / Urban Experience di Carlo Infante ( http://www.performingmedia.org/ e http://urbanexperience.ning.com/ )

Musei in Comune 2.0 e Marina Bellini ( http://museiincomuneroma.wordpress.com/ )

The Hub Roma ( http://www.hubroma.net/ )

Next Exit/Roma Creativa e Daniela Ubaldi

NextExit ( http://www.nextexit.it )

Roma Contemporanea e Rossella Reale ( http://www.mappaitaliacontemporanea.it )

Emmanuele Pilia ( http://piliaemmanuele.wordpress.com/info/ )

Valentina Giannicchi ( http://valentinagiannicchi.wordpress.com/ )

Hortus ( http://www.vg-hortus.it )

Paesaggio Critico ( http://paesaggiocritico.wordpress.com/ )

Atlas of Rome @ Festa dell’Architettura, Index Urbis, Rome

admin — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 17:29:29 +0000

Art is Open Source and Fake Press will be presenting an enormous interactive infoaesthetic environment at the Festa dell’Architettura of Rome, from the 9th to 12th of June 2010.

The interactive environment is named “Atlante di Roma” (Atlas of Rome) and it is an instance of a wider project which will be launched online on the website http://www.atlantedellevisioni.net . The project is curated by Paolo Valente, who practically made everything possible. The Atlas has another component which is called ABC Roma by Giuseppe Stampone.

Index Urbis, the logo of the Festa dell'Architettura

The idea is to create a display/interact environment that is able to let people experience multiple views on the city they live in or that they’re visiting, and to research and investigate on the visions that architects, artists, institutions and, in general, other people have had on urban spaces, through projects, actions, competitions, events, works, performances, research, institutional or political actions.

The system will be open to anyone and is designed to be reused, reshown and re-shared multiple times.

the brochure of the Atlante di Roma

The environment is built from multiple components:

a 35 meters wide projection composed through 8 collaborating servers processing in realtime the interactions coming from the Atlas

on the projection 4 interactive infoaesthetic representations show the visions hosted in the Atlas and the interactions of the individuals choosing to be part of the experience:

Linearity

In Linearity the visions take the form of mechanisms grabbing their life energy from the interactions among individuals and themes. Spheres represent visions and, while moving, they are constantly fed from the themes that they explore.

NeoMap

Neo Map explores territories bypassing their geophysical or toponomastic characteristics, and describes them theough the projects, actions and the lives that exist in them. In the visualization circles represent the visions, dislocated according to their reciprocal geographical locations and connected by subjects, thus creating a new visually semantic geography.

Bridges

Bridges explores interconnections. Visions orbit around the respective themes, in a cyclic procession. Visions and themes dynamically show bridges and interconnections, according to he subjects and actions that they share.

TimeScape

Timescape transforms the passage of time into a landscape. Visions are represented in their time dimension, occupying spaces that are proportional to their duration and sequence. A geography defined through time and correlation is made visible and interactable.

The sounds populating all of the visualizations are completely generated by the contents, interactions and from the emerging data, inferring new relationships among people and projects and representing them in sounds.

4 multitouch screens will allow people to interact with the environment, controlling interfaces that will materialize directly onto the large projection.

come join us at Index Urbis for the Atlante delle Visioni!

xDxD.vs.xDxD and penelope.di.pixel on Wired Italy

admin — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 16:40:08 +0000

and here we are:

xdxd.vs.xdxd and penelope.di.pixel on Wired Italy

We ended up on the italian edition of Wired Magazine, speaking about augmented reality, love, digital revolutions and jail.

Here’s a PDF for your (and our) reference. Hope the guys at Wired don’t get too mad about me putting it up.

http://www.wired.it

Here is the PDF of the article: xDxD.vs.xDxD and penelope.di.pixel on Wired Italy