Motivating / Orienting Questions
Carrying on the research from Synthesis' Spring 2014 Residency on Improvisational Environments
we host a series of experiments motivated by parallel inquiries.
• How can we modulate one's (not spectator's) sense of dynamic, change, temporal texture using lighting?
• How can people and room collectively retrospect and anticipate action?
• How can we control a composite of lighting in order to infuse a space with different potential temporal responses to activity's rhythmic content?
• What is the minimum signal needed to orient bodies' movements to one another?
• How can moving bodies signal one another concurrently, and still manage collective anticipation or retrospection, or improvisatory variation?
• How do / can the architectural qualities of the lighting condition the temporal evolution of the movement of people in the space?
( These are high priority questions, to prep for Einsteins Dreams with Topological Media Lab. )
we host a series of experiments motivated by parallel inquiries.
• How can we modulate one's (not spectator's) sense of dynamic, change, temporal texture using lighting?
• How can people and room collectively retrospect and anticipate action?
• How can we control a composite of lighting in order to infuse a space with different potential temporal responses to activity's rhythmic content?
• What is the minimum signal needed to orient bodies' movements to one another?
• How can moving bodies signal one another concurrently, and still manage collective anticipation or retrospection, or improvisatory variation?
• How do / can the architectural qualities of the lighting condition the temporal evolution of the movement of people in the space?
( These are high priority questions, to prep for Einsteins Dreams with Topological Media Lab. )
Etudes
Lighting Ecology, Darkener and Lighteners
Sha Xin Wei, Omar Faleh
Imagine everybody enters with a personal "budget" of either light or dark. Where you dwell, the lamps closest to you glow charged by your store of light if you are a Lightener. If you are a Darkener, the room gets darker where you dwell. Maybe some gesture animates or modulates the behaviour of the lighting. For example, certain gestures or movement qualities pump persistence into the nearby lights, or extends their collective behaviour in time or across the room. We'll improvise with live-coding and body storming during the LRR.
Perhaps there are certain objects that impart lightening or darkening power to you, such as an unlit candle, or a black fire-charred piece of lumber. Perhaps placing one of Byron's fiducials on a surface tells the system to project a certain video texture over that part of the surface. These pre-prepared video textures should be very simple, e.g. moving stripes, pinked noise, pools of oil, feathered colour field + noise, etc.
Let's define several magic "laws of physics" or "ecologies" of light/dark that we can easily revise in play. Metaphors: infection, recharge, change identity, spectra.
Michael Montanaro: Some objects are talismans -- they make you a Lightener or Darkener when you touch them.
Omar Faleh: wearable light : people become lamps that emit steady warm light, and lamps can become a flickering dynamic object. Thus, lights come off the fixed grids and poles and become part of the living event.
Sha Xin Wei: Think of every body (every thing) as having temporal spectra. Proximity yields spectral interference. (Experience rhythmic equivalent of radio interference.)
Timbre: intimate living space vs. the cold office space, modulating senses of place and atmosphere.
Imagine everybody enters with a personal "budget" of either light or dark. Where you dwell, the lamps closest to you glow charged by your store of light if you are a Lightener. If you are a Darkener, the room gets darker where you dwell. Maybe some gesture animates or modulates the behaviour of the lighting. For example, certain gestures or movement qualities pump persistence into the nearby lights, or extends their collective behaviour in time or across the room. We'll improvise with live-coding and body storming during the LRR.
Perhaps there are certain objects that impart lightening or darkening power to you, such as an unlit candle, or a black fire-charred piece of lumber. Perhaps placing one of Byron's fiducials on a surface tells the system to project a certain video texture over that part of the surface. These pre-prepared video textures should be very simple, e.g. moving stripes, pinked noise, pools of oil, feathered colour field + noise, etc.
Let's define several magic "laws of physics" or "ecologies" of light/dark that we can easily revise in play. Metaphors: infection, recharge, change identity, spectra.
Michael Montanaro: Some objects are talismans -- they make you a Lightener or Darkener when you touch them.
Omar Faleh: wearable light : people become lamps that emit steady warm light, and lamps can become a flickering dynamic object. Thus, lights come off the fixed grids and poles and become part of the living event.
Sha Xin Wei: Think of every body (every thing) as having temporal spectra. Proximity yields spectral interference. (Experience rhythmic equivalent of radio interference.)
Timbre: intimate living space vs. the cold office space, modulating senses of place and atmosphere.
Reading Movement / Reading Space
Chris Ziegler
A research setup, where physical movement can be read only through visual / acoustic systems. The body is invisible. The movement can be read through mediated systems, by visual and acoustic signs.
READING MOVEMENT is an experiment in which physical movement can be read through visual / acoustic signalling systems. The body is invisible, so the movement can only be read through acoustic and visual traces. Where is the "breakpoint" wherein human movement can be identified as such through a reference system?
Cameras, Tracking Systems, Microphones can measure specific portions of physical movement. Other information, which can't be recorded, is lost. One could try to record as much sensor data as possible to catch the complete experience. Adopting a minimax approach also to seining movement, we can go into another direction: what's the minimum information we need to "read" the entirety of a body's movement? Which media setting (acoustic or visual) is most useful to identify human movement as such? Where is the threshold at which movement loses its reference to the human body, becoming abstract? Can we read the "effort" to identify human movement, which is different from mechanical or abstract movement?
This research builds up on the experience of the production of "corpus pygmalion" (2012). In the LRR workshop we would like to include other lighting systems then used in the production to research how the architecture and the reflection of space, the silhouette of the moving body and also strobes and flashes can play a role in READING MOVEMENT.
See Corpus Pygmalion Body Lightkit in Techniques.
A research setup, where physical movement can be read only through visual / acoustic systems. The body is invisible. The movement can be read through mediated systems, by visual and acoustic signs.
READING MOVEMENT is an experiment in which physical movement can be read through visual / acoustic signalling systems. The body is invisible, so the movement can only be read through acoustic and visual traces. Where is the "breakpoint" wherein human movement can be identified as such through a reference system?
Cameras, Tracking Systems, Microphones can measure specific portions of physical movement. Other information, which can't be recorded, is lost. One could try to record as much sensor data as possible to catch the complete experience. Adopting a minimax approach also to seining movement, we can go into another direction: what's the minimum information we need to "read" the entirety of a body's movement? Which media setting (acoustic or visual) is most useful to identify human movement as such? Where is the threshold at which movement loses its reference to the human body, becoming abstract? Can we read the "effort" to identify human movement, which is different from mechanical or abstract movement?
This research builds up on the experience of the production of "corpus pygmalion" (2012). In the LRR workshop we would like to include other lighting systems then used in the production to research how the architecture and the reflection of space, the silhouette of the moving body and also strobes and flashes can play a role in READING MOVEMENT.
See Corpus Pygmalion Body Lightkit in Techniques.
Correlation Analysis
Michael Krzyzaniak, Sha Xin Wei
The goal for "correlation experiments” during the LRR Nov 17-26 is pretty concrete. We want to discover some non-isomorphic relations between co-movement, movement by ensembles (or individuals) that those people themselves claim are:
(1) “correlated”, mutually responding in some way, or
(2) anticipate or retrospect activity,
either among the humans or the light fields.
(1) Julie, Varsha and Mike can go through some movement “games” / studies responding to the Motivating Questions (above).
(2) Xin Wei, Pavan and Pavan’s group can witness this work, talk with Julie, Mike and Varsha, review videos simultaneously with streams of data as well as correlation, and look at Mike’s data from accelerometers and correlation computations. Mike’s recorded data streams are concurrent with video of activity. Mike has coded the instruments needed.
The goal for "correlation experiments” during the LRR Nov 17-26 is pretty concrete. We want to discover some non-isomorphic relations between co-movement, movement by ensembles (or individuals) that those people themselves claim are:
(1) “correlated”, mutually responding in some way, or
(2) anticipate or retrospect activity,
either among the humans or the light fields.
(1) Julie, Varsha and Mike can go through some movement “games” / studies responding to the Motivating Questions (above).
(2) Xin Wei, Pavan and Pavan’s group can witness this work, talk with Julie, Mike and Varsha, review videos simultaneously with streams of data as well as correlation, and look at Mike’s data from accelerometers and correlation computations. Mike’s recorded data streams are concurrent with video of activity. Mike has coded the instruments needed.
Past Work and Related Studies
Persona Palette
Sha Xin Wei, Julian Stein
Imbue structured lightfield(s) with persona -- e.g. imitative/forgetful (mockingbird), gregarious, curious, aggressive, know-it-all ... noised from analog, not computer logic.
(See ED video on vimeo.) Use the entire lighting kit: fixed par's, moving light, LED's, mobile lights, strobe...
Make as many persona as possible. A palette of persona.
Mockingbird is always a couple of moments behind the Agent.
Know-it-all tries to predict where the Agent is going to go next, and extrapolates: For example, build a Kalman filter model on movement of first N ( 3 < N ~ # of people), blobs tracked from above. (See ED video of Julian's moving light following people's blobs on the floor.) After some time (or after some time based on ActivityClock), start extrapolating: start moving the spot ahead of the people's blobs -- to where the system thinks they are headed.
Game: Room RETROSPECT | ANTICIPATE People, versus People RETROSPECT | ANTICIPATE Room
Imbue structured lightfield(s) with persona -- e.g. imitative/forgetful (mockingbird), gregarious, curious, aggressive, know-it-all ... noised from analog, not computer logic.
(See ED video on vimeo.) Use the entire lighting kit: fixed par's, moving light, LED's, mobile lights, strobe...
Make as many persona as possible. A palette of persona.
Mockingbird is always a couple of moments behind the Agent.
Know-it-all tries to predict where the Agent is going to go next, and extrapolates: For example, build a Kalman filter model on movement of first N ( 3 < N ~ # of people), blobs tracked from above. (See ED video of Julian's moving light following people's blobs on the floor.) After some time (or after some time based on ActivityClock), start extrapolating: start moving the spot ahead of the people's blobs -- to where the system thinks they are headed.
Game: Room RETROSPECT | ANTICIPATE People, versus People RETROSPECT | ANTICIPATE Room
Movement studies: Michael Montanaro
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Camouflage
Luke Kautz
Experiments with camouflage.
Try camouflage inside moving texture? See dappled forest shade...
Projecting video onto the floor as moving-image camouflage.
Experiments with camouflage.
Try camouflage inside moving texture? See dappled forest shade...
Projecting video onto the floor as moving-image camouflage.
