Ortochestras – Quadrocopters Perform 007 Theme

Posted on | March 1, 2012 | No Comments

For a good few months I’ve been accumulating a healthy amount of content on specific projects that are contributing to the development of what I like to call the ‘Ortochestras’ (auto-orchestras). Automated musical performances are on the grow. With micro controllers like the Arduino, it is much easier for anyone to control and automate component that influence, react to or directly control the world around us in whatever way the creator desires.

This is a project that I’m more than happy to start the Ortochestra related posts on:

Flying robot quadrotors perform the James Bond Theme by playing various instruments including the keyboard, drums and maracas, a cymbal, and the debut of an adapted guitar built from a couch frame. The quadrotors play this “couch guitar” by flying over guitar strings stretched across a couch frame; plucking the strings with a stiff wire attached to the base of the quadrotor. A special microphone attached to the frame records the notes made by the “couch guitar”.

These flying quadrotors are completely autonomous, meaning humans are not controlling them; rather they are controlled by a computer programed with instructions to play the instruments.

- taken from arduinoarts.com

The technology behind these Quadrocopters has been developed at Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science. It’s responsible for some of the most innovative robotics research on the planet, much of it coming out of the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Lab. Using musical performance to demonstrate the agility and incredible manoeuvrability of the technology is a brilliant approach indeed, especially with creatively fun videos going down a storm across social media platforms. Although, the other much more life changing possibilities that this technology could offer is impressive on a whole different scale:

Ooo I’ve got one! I’ve got one! *Ahem* – “I bet these robo-musicians take Double-A7 batteries!” Ohohohohoh…oho…hmmm.

Peace.

- Leigh Davies

Category: Advances In Technology, Arduino Projects, Do-It-Yourself Tech
Tags: 3d > Arduino > design > interactive > music > nature > Open Source > performance > sound > Technology

Danger Beach – Apache Music Video

Posted on | February 18, 2012 | No Comments

For the first time last week I came across a Vimeo channel: oneedo. This channel hosts a wonderful collection of freely created animations from a very creative chap by the name of Ned Wenlock.

“oneedo is a place for my personal, non commercial projects and experiments. The music video’s featured are often initiated by me as a way to explore a style or idea in a short contained film. The comics I draw tend to highlight my love of Pulp and Pop culture and often have the kind of ending that feels tacked on – I’m working on that. The illustrations will one day lead to a coffee table book that people buy because it’s heavy and smells of ink and makes their house look good. And finally short films, this is where I’m heading. To combine all of the above into films that express ideas that are personal to me and hopefully resonate with a like minded audience.”

- taken from http://oneedo.posterous.com/

The level of creativity that this animation holds is the reason why it has gripped my attention and focused it indefinitely towards Wenlock’s work this last week. The amazingly thought out carousel technique applied to the numerous layers in this music video for Danger Beach’s ‘Apache’ is what sets it apart from the countless other digital animations that reside on the big wide web, second to none.

‘Style wise I’m torn between the old and the new, I like and respect greatly the skill and innovation of mid century designers which might be evident in my work, but I’m also searching for something fresh and idiosyncratic.’

- Ned Wenlock

I think it’s safe to say the following about that Mr Wenlock:

The most intriguing bit about all of this was that I’ve discovered Danger Beach’s album: ‘Milky Way’. The spaghetti western feel to the guitar craft is a style that is very sparse in my music collection; as sparse as desert water. It’s a fantastic collection of tracks which are self-aware of their melodic content, leading to tracks lasting for a fleeting two minutes simply ‘seering’ the music rather than arriving on your platter a slightly charred ‘well-done’.

This is a testiment to a promotional vehicle, where by this wonderful animation (being a wonderful piece of work on its own) has provided an online promotional pathway for Danger Beach, and a fun one at that.

Thanks to this animation, I found Milky Way here.

I purchased it at what I’d claim to be a very fair price, totalling to more than what it would cost me on iTunes.

The Album is incredible.

It was an enjoyable and rewarding experience: I feel stimulated visually and enriched sonically.

Thank you Mr Wenlock and Thank you Danger Beach.

This system works.

Peace.

- Leigh Davies

Category: Incredible Artwork, Notable Musical Performances
Tags: 3d > album > animation > art > audiovisual > colour > design > installation > music > performance > sound

Daan Roosegaarde – Lotus 7.0

Posted on | February 16, 2012 | No Comments

‘Lotus 7.0‘ is a living wall made out of smart foils which fold open in response to human behavior. If you were to walk by ‘Lotus 7.0‘, you would be greeted by hundreds of aluminium foils unfold themselves in an organic way; generating transparent voids between private and public.

Here physical walls become immaterial, through a poetic morphing of space and people.

The City of Lille have commissioned Daan Roosegaarde to build ‘Lotus Dome’ (2011-2012), an upcoming living aluminum foil structure that ‘blooms’ in response to touch and warmth in a minified, more personal approach compared to ‘Lotus 7.0‘.

Peace.

- Leigh Davies

Category: Incredible Artwork, Interactive Projects
Tags: art > awareness > colour > design > illusion > installation > interactive > nature > Technology

Riusuke Fukahori – The Human Makerbot Artist

Posted on | February 16, 2012 | No Comments

Riusuke Fukahori is an incredibly talented painter with a technique comparable to that of a 3D printer such as a Makerbot.

By painting a layer then sealing it with resin he is able to build up 3D painting-sculptures. As the painting builds so does the realism of the painting subject leading to an amazing end result where even light and shadows play an important part in the finished piece.

Peace.

- Leigh Davies

Category: Incredible Artwork
Tags: 3d > art > colour > design

Feed – Promotional Video

Posted on | February 15, 2012 | No Comments

It’s been a busy few months, especially on the Incidental front and as the development on Feed draws us closer to the first public release of the app I was asked to produce a small promotional video showcasing a glimpse at Feed’s capabilities and creative potential:

Earlier this month we met with one of our current funders: Head4Arts. During this meeting we finally got to present a beta version of our app to a very enthused team at the organisation. We then successfully secured funding to deliver a series of workshops to the pupils of Abersychan High School where we will introduce them to Feed, allowing them to explore sound in a new and exciting way and even give them the opportunity to provide creative feedback on the app allowing them to influence changes and additions to Feed’s development before its official release in the App Store. Exciting times to come!

Peace.

- Leigh Davies.

Category: Incidental - Feed, iOS Development
Tags: app > application > feed > iOS > ipad > open frameworks > pd

Holodesk – The Interactive Holographic Display

Posted on | December 11, 2011 | No Comments

A nice independently developed addition to the augmented technology trend is this interactive display – the Holodesk. Using a standard monitor, a beam splitter, a webcam and Kinect (Microsoft’s 3d sensor camera device) this augmented experience allows the users to interact with digital graphics and objects using real world objects or even their own hands.

‘HoloDesk is a novel interactive system combining an optical see through display and Kinect camera to create the illusion that users are directly interacting with 3D graphics. A virtual image of a 3D scene is rendered through a half silvered mirror and spatially aligned with the real-world for the viewer. Users easily reach into an interaction volume displaying the virtual image. This allows the user to literally get their hands into the virtual display. A novel real-time algorithm for representing hands and other physical objects, which are sensed by the Kinect inside this volume, allows physically realistic interaction between real and virtual 3D objects.’

As with most technology of this nature, especially being independently developed, it has a way to go before its 100% reliable and useable in serious manor but as improved 3d sensors and displays become cheaper the Holodesk will soon develop into something quite decent and impressive indeed.

Peace.

- Leigh Davies

Category: Advances In Technology, Do-It-Yourself Tech, Interactive Projects
Tags: augmented > design > illusion > installation > interactive > motion tracking > Technology

Marco Tempest: The magic of truth and lies (and iPods)

Posted on | December 11, 2011 | No Comments

TED never fails to offer a full array of wondrous videos: communicating creativity, innovation and individual peoples stories. In this video, modern technoillusionist Marco Tempest shows off an iOS app that, as he states, ‘Will be used by artists; multimedia artists in particular’. It synchronises a video/videos across multiple iOS devices allowing for some incredibly creative and performative applications, and this performance does a fantastic job on beginning to show off its potential.

Very impressive and interesting to say the least! How could you see yourself using this application in your own creative endeavours? Any takers?

Peace.

- Leigh Davies

Category: Advances In Technology, Incredible Artwork, Interactive Projects
Tags: art > audiovisual > design > illusion > installation > interactive > iOS > ipad > live > magic > performance > Technology

My Sound Museum – The Arnolfini 50th Anniversary Event

Posted on | November 29, 2011 | No Comments

After much work on the development and many many hours of coding we finally compiled a demo release of ‘Feed’, the new iOS app from Incidental.

Even in its very first demo testing state Feed is working very well. It’s very pleasing to use and extremely rich in features and functionality. Now functioning for the iPad, Feed boats multitouch capabilities allowing for many interesting compositions and real time performances to take place with the added bonus that it is completely portable, leaving no sound unreachable.

On The November 19th the team were kindly invited to take part in one of the Arnolfini’s 50th Anniversary events; My Sound Museum. This event allowed the public to take an iPad around the Arnolfini’s Studios, and use Feed to record audio samples from around/within the art exhibits allowing them to create musical compositions in real time with the highly underestimated natural source of ‘found-sound’. The app proved to function great in all environments and all users were immediately engaged. They were seen reciting, recording and resampling text from the exhibits of the show, and even using noises from some of the interactive pieces of artwork.

This was the first public user test event for Feed and it proved very useful to us in understanding the apps future development requirements allowing us to plan and approach alterations and the addition of new substantial features to improve the users experience.

A promotional video demonstrating and detailing the features of the app will be available over the next few weeks leading up to an accessible V1.0 public release of Feed across iOS App stores worldwide shortly after. More updates on progress very soon.

Peace.

- Leigh Davies

Category: Incidental - Feed
Tags: Ableton > dare to be digital > design > feed > installation > interactive > iOS > ipad > music > pd > performance > Reactable > sound > Technology

Kinect Monkey See? Kinect Monkey Do.

Posted on | August 15, 2011 | No Comments

Created by Jan Sieber and Ralph Kistler, ‘Monkey Business’ uses the Kinect camera as a motion tracking device to control a stuffed toy monkey. Information from the Kinect is recieved by the computer which is then processed and sent to an Arduino. The Arduino sends the processed information to 10 servomotors which bend and shape the monkey, imitating the users motion infront of the Kinect.

“A cuddly toy monkey hanging on a wall like a Jumping Jack.
With a friendly “Hello” the puppet starts to react to the visitors movements
and immediately apes every gesture with its arms and legs, its head and body.
You can let the ape act smoothly or invite him to a wild dance.
But in a subtle way the monkey asks for another move you have never ever performed before.
Playing the game you will loose control unconsciously
and after the seductive encounter you might start wondering
what is all this monkey business about?
Who pulls the strings? “

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The project was created around the ideas of ’the problem of real natural interaction, and to make “an ironic comment about the present art business through this iconic monkey figure.” – “The flexible suspension of the ape together with fast responding motors allows an astonishing quick-witted behavior and a tempting interaction experience for the user.’

Monkey Business is simply another interesting and fun use of the Kinect, and most importantly a great example of a good use of cheap electronic components and open source software.

Peace.

- Leigh Davies.

Category: Interactive Projects, Uncategorized
Tags: Arduino > art > design > installation > interactive > kinect > motion tracking > Open Source > performance > Technology

Soak – Simulated Watercolour

Posted on | August 8, 2011 | No Comments

Another little gem from the guys at Everyware is ‘Soak’. This project allows the user to poke an interactive canvas screen releasing a dye effect seemingly from their very fingertips allowing them to make paintings using the standard wet on wet painting technique.

Everyware state that this project simply uses Kinect technology, to recognise the position of the users fingers/hands on the ‘canvas’ and Processing which is in charge of simulating the colour bleed areas defined by the information from the Kinect. The visuals are then generated and projected onto the back of the interactive canvas.