Cimatics Masterclass Live A/V, Brussels (2007/2008)

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:23:48 +0000

This week I am attending the fourth and last week of the Cimatics Masterclass Live A/V 2007/2008 in Brussels. Cimatics is a Brussels based international platform for Live A/V. This Masterclass consists of a series of 4 workshops with lectures from different internationally renowned media artists / theorists (amongst others Marc Amerika, Lab[au], Yves de Mey, Jerry Galle, Brendan Byrne & Ana Carvalho, Boris Debackere). The practical part is all about collaboration: 10 selected artists, working in different fields of media-art (and with backgrounds ranging from choreography to architecture) form groups and collaborate with each other, with the aim of creating an audiovisual performance project.

A Video-based Motion Tracking System

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 12:02:54 +0000

On october 2nd 2007, a modified version of the motion tracking system i originally developed for my Lightroom project, will be used in an interactive sound-installation of Werner Urban at the Kinderboekenbal 2007 at Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ in Amsterdam. For those interested i will share here a little bit of the technical backgrounds of this system.

Hardware The system consists of a firewire camera (from UniBrain), with a wide-angle lens (Marshall Electronics), an omnidirectional infra-red illuminator (homemade, for very dark lighting conditions) connected via an 11 mtr. long firewire cable (also from UniBrain) to a computer. This computer is running a softwarepatch (written in the Max/Jitter programming environment). I usually place the camera directly above the scene being tracked, so that the barrel distortion of the wide angle lens isn’t too annoying. It can track and report up to 8 different positions simultaneously (thanks to the excellent external object for Jitter written by Randy Jones: 2up.jit.centroids). These coordinates can then be used for triggering all sorts of actions in Max. In the case of the original project it triggered a matrix of 64 lights and the spatialization of sound in a quadraphonic speaker setup.

Techniques on Arnold Hoogerwerf

Cimatics Masterclass Live A/V, Brussels (2007/2008)

A Video-based Motion Tracking System