Digital Technology and Culture

A blog for students and friends of Washington State University Vancouver's Digital Technology and Culture Program

Open House, Part 2

This image explains visually how the motion tracking lab I am building at WSUV works.

But let me explain the process to you.

You see in the picture two labs. One is mine at WSUV and the other is Steve's at UVic. Looking at me in my lab, you can see infrared cameras mounted at each corner on light trees. These cameras are pointed down into a performance space. I am standing in the performance space with infrared trackers in my hand. The cameras pick up signals from these trackers and send information to the PC sitting on the table.

This begs the question: What information do the cameras send?

Well, information regarding my location in the room. To put it simply, the space in the lab is conceptualized as a 3D grid, and the computer can calculate exactly where I am standing in that grid because the trackers tell the cameras and the cameras tell the computer.

Once the PC in my lab has that information, it sends it to Steve's via a central server. Steve's computer reads my data.

Hold that thought for a moment, and we will come back to it.

While my PC is sending data to Steve's PC, it is also sending data to my Macintosh, which houses all of the media elements Steve and I have loaded in it. The data triggers a response from the Mac depending on where I am in the room. Why? Because the room is organized into zones, and when I walk into a zone with a tracker, the media programmed in that zone are evoked. This means that if I program a video clip in the middle of the performance space about 2 inches from the floor, I can evoke that video clip when I step into that zone and move the tracker into that part of space.

Going back to the data my PC is sending Steve's . . . his PC gets my information and then sends it to his Macintosh. Because our labs are calibrated to be exactly the same, the media element I evoked is also evoked in his lab. So, he sees the video clip, too.

If you think that is complex: Steve is also moving around with his trackers and evoking his own media elements. His cameras are picking up his movements and sending the data to his PC. And Steve's PC is sending that data to my PC via the central computer. And my PC is talking to my Macintosh, which causes the Mac to evoke the exact media element that Steve has evoked. So, for example, if he moves into the zone with the red lights programmed five feet from the ground, I will see that same red light in my lab at pretty close to the same time as he does in his (that is how fast the networks are working).

This means that Steve and I can perform together at a distance via high speed networks. We call this telematic collaboration.

Media elements include, by the way, light, sound, images, video clips, music, spoken word, and animiation. So, essentially, we can put on an entire live light show, musical performance, video installation, etc. at-a-distance or stage a multimedia performance together in the same space.

At the Open House I hope for us to perform clips from Virtual DJ, Steve's sound and light show. More about that later. . .

posted by: grigar at 21:24 | link | comments |

Comments: