2002 Fall
Instructor:
TA:
Media Arts & Technology 251
George Legrady
Andreas Schlegel
Monday 5-9pm - Estudio, Department of Art Studio, 2nd floor
"To experience space is to engage with it through one's presence,
to possess it by being immersed in it, in the way one possesses space
when inside a room, in a park or on the streets. In the process of interacting
with the digital world, we can consider real space as the site where our
bodies come into contact with the technological devices by which we experience
virtual space."
"The Production of Space", Henri Lefevbre
A MAT graduate level projects course in which students will learn how to design and produce an interactive artwork where the movement of the spectator sensed through a video camera in a defined space will be used to control and select data of images and sounds in an installation. Students will work in small teams to design and implement a project of their own which will explore feedback interaction.
The course will concentrate on the conventions and design of interactive installations, and the planning of the dramaturgy for human-computer feedback interaction, taking into consideration the perceptual and social dynamics of audience location and movement. Students will conceptualize and produce a project while learning the technical skills. The task will be to create a work that will be "event" based and successfully integrate sound, text, image through the sensing of movement, or behavior of participants over time.
Trackthemcolors Macromedia Director and the Lingo scripting language. Analog and digital cameras connected to firewire or analog video input. Protools and 6 channel sound spatialization.
1. Introduction to concepts of interactivity in installations: Perceiving
movement, behavior, time and space, controllers, feedback, phrasing, etc.
2. Student teams do research and concept planning for a project
3. Overview and crash course in Macromedia director and the lingo scripting
program
4. Techniques and conceptualization of how to implement the camera interface
with the Trackthemcolors Xtra in the Mac and Windows environment
5. Project planning and storyboard development
6. Project production.
Where
the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction, Paul Dourish,
MIT Press
New Screen
Media, Cinema/Art/Narrative, ed. Martin Rieser/Andrea Zapp, British
Film Institute
Ctrl-[space]: Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother,
ed. T. Levin, U.Frohne, P.Weibel, MIT Press
Special
Edition Using Macromedia Director 8.5, Rosensweig, Que (or equivalent)
lists.dir
parentObj.dir
imageLingo.dir
copypixels_hi.dir
alpha2.dir
alphaChannelFade.dir
ttc webcam (pc + mac)
Use "download link to disk" or "save link as"
You can get the demo or the full version of the trackthemcolors xtra
from smoothware.com.
for mac use the trackthemcolors 1.5 version of the xtra,
for pc use the trackthemcolors 1.0 windows version.
Camera
for pc we use the Labtec usb WebCam. should work for windows 95,98,ME,2000,XP. we tested the camera on a pc with windows xp and it worked fine.
for mac we use the pyro firewire webcam and an analog surveillance camera with a a/d converter to firewire. other usb and firewire cameras should work fine too.
for further information on cameras and compatibility, go to smoothware/compatibility.