The 17th of June was our big day. The last day to present ourselves, to show what we worked on so hard the last few months and what we wanted to be so proud of. And proud we were!

A lot of friends, family and strangers came to Trouw to see the project results of the MediaLAB. We were placed on a special place (at the top of the stairs) from which we had the overview over the whole exposition area!

First Chris Boven welcomed everyone who by that time arrived at Trouw, and after that Frank Alsema gave a tour in which he interviewed all the teams about their project. We had to bear the brunt, which was quite exciting.. But it was also an advantage, since we after that could immediately start showing our installation to everyone who was interested. And a lot of people were!

It was also the first time for Jolande and Kathy (our assigners) to see the final product and they were very pleased to see the result. They said they would ‘definitely place it in the museum’ so we were superhappy!

Also, the software and all the technical stuff worked as we wanted it to work. We had no problems during the exposition, which means we made a lot of progress in only one week (at the Open Dag a week before it didn’t work, remember?).  There was only one moment of horror when we thought the installation was on fire, but luckily it was only kitchen smells from Trouw…

Below you see some screenshots of the interface. When you are inside the installation and have already entered your name, the digital mirror will make a screenshot after a few seconds. This is uploaded to flickr. Don’t worry, we make them visible only for the medialab flickr account and its friends. Below are some of our own ‘digital identities’, to give you an impression of what you could see in the digital mirror.

The day after the event our installation was driven back to Tilburg, so we aren’t able to show it anymore.. At least not in the upcoming few weeks or months.

Now, we are preparing our final documents to hand over to Scryption. We’ll keep you posted.

… Saro will always work on his code.

On the 10th of June (last thursday) the HvA had an ‘Open Dag’. We were invited to represent ourselves and the MediaLAB in the exporoom on the fourth floor.

Noraly made a plan of action, but due to some technical problems we were late with setting up the technical part of the installation – and then, we even had more problems with that… The camera that we always use was somehow not recognized by the laptop and the light circumstances weren’t optimal, so you couldn’t see the projected image clear enough. We had quite some troubles as you can see, but fortunately there were also good things!

The installation itself looked interesting and attracted a lot of people who wanted to see what it is, by whom it was made and why it was there. Even though we weren’t able to show what it actually had to do, we could tell people what it was supposed to do, tell them about the MediaLAB and how it is to work on a project like this, and what the idea behind the installation is. Students-to-be liked the idea that they could have the possibility to make something like this, and parents liked the fact that it was based on theory – some of them were familiar with the theory of Marshall McLuhan.

One of the people we talked to is head of the student union of IAM. He saw the installation when it worked (sort of) and was very enthusiastic. We were glad to hear that he ‘got the message’ that we want to make clear: he liked the idea of exploring your digital identity in a playful way. When I asked him what seemed a good place for this installation, he thought of all sorts of environments, like (art)festivals, but also first classes of highschool, to make young people aware of their online identity. An actual topic, with the Dutch elections in mind – more and more political parties are thinking about starting lessons in ‘media literacy’.

Last Thursday was the last day of WCIT2010 (World Congress on Information Technology) where we were representing the HvA / MediaLAB in the Creative Industries pavillion.

We did this by putting short compilationvideo’s on the screens in the pavillion. The second one was made at WCIT itself, in a hurry, just to show how we came to the final installation.

And of course: networking and sharing our businesscards!

We had a fun day at WCIT and are proud that we were able to be there – it is quite a big happening!

Thursday, 20th may 2010 – OUR BIG DAY! We presented our installation the first time to spectators at the opening of the Kenniscentrum.

Our panels arrived in the morning and we were all really curious of how they would look like and if everything fits. When building up the installation, we realized that it was much bigger than we would have expected! But it’s nice, since we all think it just appropriate

So, lots of work to do until 4 o’clock. We had to build up everything, coordinate things, have lots of coffee in between and then, worst part, we had to attach the silver foil…. What an adventure! It took sooo much time and it was very difficult to make it look as nice as possible. But actually it was also fun and we all had to work together as a team (the 2 foil-holding girls, Saro with the water pump and Stefano to flatten the foil on the plexiglas panel). We took some nice pictures, here they are:

When everything was build up, we were very pleased and had the feeling, that we really created something to be proud of (that was one of our goals since the very first beginning – see post its! ) We got a lot of compliments that it looked quite professional and I think a lot of people wouldn’t have expected the quietly in the corner working Scryption team to occupy the whole cafeteria with a huge installation.

But 4 o’clock arrived soon and we have to admit that we had some problems making the installation work. At first it took much more time than expected just to calibrate the screen. And then we also had to fight against the different light circumstances in the cafeteria. We considered them theoretically, but we didn’t ecpect that the light would differ so much from the light in the atelier in Amersfoort, where we tested it before. Additionally there were also some problems with the reflections and the technical part as well, since no shape could be seen and the information given was unreadable.
After maybe two hours, 2 more huge pieces of fabric on the top of the installation and uncountable liters of sweat, Saro managed to make at least the technical part work properly and we could finally satisfy the expectations of the nosy visitors.

There are still a lot of things that have to be improved and tested (e.g. the instruction sheet, the new beamer, how to cover the installation) but we are all proud that we managed to show our work to the spectators on this opening. And we still have 3 weeks left for the final event at the TROUW (17th June – BE THERE!). So still lots of time to test, test, test, improve and succeed!

Friday morning we prepared for a long day of building and testing at the atelier in Amersfoort. Robert and Noraly went to Tilburg by car to get a touchscreen (with stand) and a beamer. At the same time, Saro, Susann and Stefano came to the atelier in Amersfoort already. Saro started to focus on the technical part with Leo (actually, they worked on it the whole day… productive!). Stefano went to the bouwmarkt with Iris to get the materials we needed, and Susann and Noraly set up the partytent.

Then we had great lunch, everyone brought something nice & home made!

Afterwards, Susann and Noraly focussed on the typewriter. After we cut a lot of stickers, we put them on the typewriter. Can you find the quote…?

Stefano was making a wooden frame to hide (and darken) the technical installation behind the ‘digital mirror’. He really enjoyed doing manly work (:

Then, we ordered pizza and played tag! After the meal we took a look at Saro’s processing he worked on with Leo. This looked quite nice, some things have to be changed and tweaked but he had worked out something nice to work with. Susann, Stefano and Noraly completed the ‘mystery box’ as we call it, covering the wooden frame with really dark black fabric. Putting the plexiglass mirror in front of it caused a lot of fun…

Saro worked on a piece for hanging the beamer and then we could finally do a test with the whole set-up. We faced some problems that we will work on this Monday.

Keep you posted!

Last thursday, we went to Scryption in Tilburg for testing our first software and materials. We planned being there at 11AM, but unfortunately we had some problems… The material we needed was delivered later than planned, and additionally the trains were delayed too! But in the end we managed to arrive safe & with everything we needed .

Scryption had a large room reserved for us, where we also had access to a room with all sorts of technical tools that were perfect for us to use! Saro immediately started to apply mirror foil to the translucent projection surface we bought the day before. The programming software was put on a Mac mini and connected to a beamer. The setup worked as Saro had expected it to work, but he also bumped into some things that we should change. The translucent projection surface was much brighter than the mirror itself and was therefore disturbing the view in the mirror. Also, the importance of a dark background appeared – this is necessary for accurate tracking. The 500W lamp we used was way too hot and didn’t really work well with the IR-filter.

While Saro was working on the technical part, at the same time, we asked Kathy (who assembles the exhibition) if they have any typewriters or telephones we can use for our second concept, the quotes. They had a whole collection of beautiful old typewriters and calculators for sale and we picked an old mustard-coloured Remington typewriter. We think it’s absolutely perfect! They didn’t have any phones we could use, but this weekend I found a wonderful phone on Marktplaats, I will pick it up later this week…

For now, we are working really hard to find all the materials we need. We keep you posted…

Honestly, this already happened two weeks ago. We had a nice dinner at Robert’s place and while we were drinking wine, we decided what concepts we are going to work on until the 17th of June.

The first and most important concept is what we until now called the ‘Google Mirror’. Through this installation, we want to make the user aware of the difference between (and even existence of, because some people don’t realize this) the real and the digital you. This will be shown by two mirrors; a real one, and a digital one. You stand in the middle of those two mirrors. You type in your name and your digital identity starts appearing. On the visualization beneath you can imagine what it will look like!

The other concept we will work on is the Quotes concept. In the exhibition, several quotes will be hidden. First, we wanted to make it a game, collecting all the quotes, but we decided to skip this and just make the quotes as little surprises or presents that you unexpectedly bump into. This can be everywhere; on a typewriter, hidden in an old crank phone, on the toilet…

Check out the concept page for more detailed descriptions, the connection to McLuhan and other things – and also the documents on the concepts we skipped.

This is what we want ! A piece of code that recognizes the contour of your body.
So it looks like we need to use Box2D library in combination of the OpenCV Library.

I tried blob tracking in Processing but at a high resolution it doesn’t seem to be so fast. So maybe in the end openFrameworks will be more the platform we’re looking for.

Today I went to Twodotone in the Rokin to visit Ubi de Feo. He’s the person who gives us mainly feedback on the technical realization of our concept.
We talked mainly about the mirror idea. This is the idea where we want to make a reflection of you but then with an extra layer projected on it that represents the digital self (stuff about you on the internet). We talked about the best way to realize the technical part. I explained him that I wanted to fill in a shape with the content found on the internet. This would be pretty hard to realize he explained and that it should be easier to let object follow different limbs. So you make for example a text block follow the head and a curtain image follow the right hand. Their are already some examples available for tracking where different limbs are.

We also talked about the projection and how to realize this. He gave me a really useful webpage with different ways of approach. This is done by a company called Mine Control.

One of the conclusions Ubi came with was that the best platform to build the project in is openFrameworks. It’s also open source so a lot of available classes are available on the web.

I already played a bit with openFrameworks (OF) now and it starting to get the basics now. I found out that you can do a lot with OF and its fast as well so a nice response speed. There are a lot of classes available and the forum seems to be a helpful help source.