Posted in Uncategorized on 23/08/2010 by raptorattack
Finished Uni, got a 2:2 (BA Hons!!) and now back in the real world. Got a great job working at a care home just outside Shrewsbury with learning difficulties guys and gals. Its ace. A burst of creativity came over me t’other day and I decided to build a piece of garden furniture. It involves a 1974 78cc chainbrake-less chainsaw and a 3′x10″x10″ slab of oak, some carving chisels and a naughty idea… watch this space…
isn’t THAT a beauty?…
its just aching to have something done with it…
Here, now it has finally had something done with it and has also got a friend in the shape of another piece. Itys a fine alternative to the old Garden Gnome and far less likely to get stolen as the perpetrator would probably give themselves a hernia trying to lift them!!
Plenty of stuff afoot for the finals. Thinking some sort of interactive projection mapping booth, sound and/or movement activated… More soon…
Across Britain there are many sites /buildings that are of importance to us from a heritage point of view. These places obviously require maintenance and support, often of a very specialist nature. Building renovation and maintenance, for example. It is surprising just how many people in the country visit places such as these. More so, it appears, than visit sporting events…THIS survey from 2008 produces some interesting facts… My plan is to produce a piece of projection mapping or similar to encourage public donation to, say, English Heritage or The National Trust. English Heritage are a Government-led body with the advantages of charity status who’s sole job is to protect the best of our national heritage (with a huge amount involving architecture). I feel, for the purposes of this subject though, that The National Trust would be my first choice as they are an independent of Government body who’s role is very much akin to English Heritage but who rely TOTALLY on membership and donation AND are subject to their members with regards to matters of policy and the like. That doesn’t mean that the principle of this brief couldn’t be applied to ANY organization at any later date though…
Initially, the idea is to produce a piece to encourage members of the public to join OR donate to the organization (at the same time, making people who are ignorant of them aware of their existence and the role they perform). The classic environment would be at gatherings in public spaces, such as Town fairs or festivals. Ludlow Festival, for example (and its Food Festival) both attract huge amounts of people on a yearly basis to a relatively small part of the world. Ludlow Castle isn’t a National Trust site but that doesn’t necessarily mean it couldn’t be used. There are many more besides…
The idea is to bring a public building (whichever it may be, civic, railway station etc) to life with sudden movement of lighting to draw passers by to it and deliver the message: This building is in danger, it is maintained by donations and subscriptions alone, please donate to…. This building has stood for 700 tears, don’t let it fall down, please donate to… etc. Alternatively (and thinking on a more practical level!), if it were at a public gala (Town Christmas fair, Food Fair) or a oft frequented place (Station forecourt?) it could be incorporated into a National Trust promotional information booth and involve a sort of giant lit-up fruit machine affair onto the fascia of the building. The ‘fruit machine’ would be operated by members of the public donating ,say, a pound to have a go on the GIANT fruit machine with the chance of winning membership to the Trust or a free entry into one of the Trust’s sites for two…
It would of course involve modelling the ‘canvas’ digitally and then projecting onto it the decided graphic to perform the ‘Fruit Machine’ actions…
Just a bit of messing with projection after obtaining a data projector for a snippet at £100 from good old eBay
Having tossed the details around in a colander, it has become a little impractical to pursue the fireplace testing any further due to the lighting restrictions if nothing else! The fact that its in our front room doesn’t help matters either. Tack has definitely been changed and a decision to create a model of a building and projecting onto it in a smaller scale seems the fave to me! It is also a practical way of pitching it as a viable method of delivering the message. An attempt was made to model the front of our house in the context of its terrace (god knows its falling down for lack of donations!) was embarked upon but its lack of any really striking features eventually ruled it out of the running…
The task remained to find a suitable subject and then, by chance, a mate of mine sent me a picture of a local Oswestry stately house called Brogyntyn Hall… Bingo! Its privately owned but is in a fairly generic style of architecture typical of Station fascias particularly and so will adequately serve as a model for the 3d version. It will be known as ‘Stott Hall’…
All I have to do now is build it, photograph it and get her modelled!! The plan is to project it onto a model from the data projector and then have the ‘mapping’ movie activated either by noise, movement or pressure pad. Right, now to make it. White card, Uhu glue and a wing and a prayer is the order…
I give you Cardboard Stott Hall…
now to model it up in Blender for which I employed the help of a friend who has guided me in the right direction with what is a free but vastly complicated piece of 3d modelling software!…. we end up with this…
This is the model built with measurements from the cardboard model and put together in Sketchup (another free modelling program). It is a three dimensional model and can be rotated through 360 degrees in any direction. This is then exported to Blender and some lighting and movement sequences rendered onto it for the final movie projection tester…
It appears that lower ambient light is needed to enhance the shadows etc… An enclosed booth made from black mounting card seems to work which suggests (predictably) that an evening environment would be the ideal time for the project to operate. The same sort of time in the winter months when commuters are generally arriving home on the train from work…
Posted in Uncategorized on 10/03/2010 by raptorattack
Currently involved in video editing marathon for a D&AD brief in support of Kate and Jase. If I ever see another bit of video footage of the fair city of Chester in my life again, it will be three hours too soon!! More as it happens…
so here we go…
and
bearing in mind that these are meant to loop and so the manic nature is continued…
The latest venture, build a game using Microsoft’s XNA framework…
Should be a hoot and there’s MONEY to be had!!
More as it happens, folks!…
Being as we missed the deadline, we’re going for the next which will, unfortunately, outrun my College career. I will endeavour to keep up the commentary nevertheless!
First, Mr Bond, I shall maintain my efforts to make head OR tail of the beast that is ‘Blender’!…
For my Negotiated studies, I’ve decided to realise the proposal I did for the Sound and Image brief last year. Giving it further consideration and after brief discussions with both Liz and Adam I think that, instead of (or as well as) a light-triggered tripwire it could also be set off with the aid of a motion sensor. This would rely, of course, on the sensor being variable as to sensitivity i.e. you wouldn’t want one triggering off at the movement of a mozzy or something as inconsequential as that (although the mosquito may have something to say about his lot in this!!). I’ve ordered som light sensors (LDR’s) and await their delivery with baited breath. I can’t find anyone who has got any motion sensors (Infra Red) in stock but will plod away on that until satifaction is achieved).
BINGO! Just found a P.I.R. detector at Cool Components and bought the bugger. Could be a little more entertaining than just a trip wire. Must get on and collect some annoying sound bytes to trigger and piss people off!!… every project should have its fun bit!!
After searching high and low for a simple ‘Tripwire’ coding I think I may have hit paydirt here… I have now to build the bugger! ‘Build it and they will come’ as the film once said (The Field, I think). Whilst searching for components I also came across Oomlout who are as cheap as the proverbial chips and a good place to look for anyone following this type of path! I digress, on with the building!!
Put it together and (predictably) it doesn’t work!! Have to take it apart again and put it back together again. That usually works, it does with old clocks and carburettors anyway!! Managed to get some more cool components out of a knackered laser level. A switch, power supply and two laser units! (see below…)
Just arrived in the post, now THAT’S what I call a laser!!
Here’s the preliminary proto (prior to routing to Processing to trip off the audio)
Bought the plans and schematic to a laser harp last night. Hopefully a few guides as to do the sound thing therein!…
Well what a load of CRAP!! Turns out that the guy got the inspiration fromseeing Jean Michel Jarre in Houston, Texas twenty odd years ago!!
I must admit though, THIS bit at the beginning is pretty tasty…
“Laser Safety
OK, let’s make this clear from the beginning – the laser devices used in this project are not toys.
I recommend using a 250mw laser for development, and a 450mw laser for larger crowd
performance.
THESE LASERS CAN BLIND, AND START FIRES – and no, that’s not ‘cool’ or
‘awesome’, that’s DANGEROUS.
The picture on the cover shows me breaking the beams with my bare hands – the only reason I
can do this is because the laser is being modulated, and each beam is only a small fraction of the
total output power. The laser on ‘full’ will burn your hand.
If you attempt this, then I’m not responsible for any damage you may cause to yourself, and
others. Buy proper laser safety glasses – and wear them. Do not stare at the laser spot without
wearing the glasses – and keep pets, and kids AWAY from the project area.
So please – treat them with respect.“
Hmmmmmm! Anyway, came across these plans for voice activation and it looks like the dog’s so all I need now is a Wave Shield for me board… OOm Lout here I come! Keep you posted.
Wave Shield arrived testerday and was in component pieces!! Had to solder it all together and order an SD card. Check out these instructions…
The card should get here tomorrow so its all hands to the deck to get some sound out of the little bastard!!
Having been through several tortuous hours of sketches not working I’ve taken the plunge and removed all traces of Arduino and Processing from my overheated machine and reinstalled them both (apart from I installed Arduino 14 instead of 15. The sketches that didn’t work previously seem to appear more encouraging. Its heads down now for intensive ‘let’s get this one going’ with Liz and Adam which involves me appearing at college on an unprecedented Thursday!!! There’s a subtext here, its worth going back to previous versions of both Processing and Arduino if something doesn’t work. ‘Later’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘better’. In fact I couldn’t get anything to work on Arduino 17 which is the latest…
Well, its back to ’17′ and all the accompanying foibles. I have enlisted the help of a close friend of mine to (hopefully) finally crack the communication twixt the two infuriating parties. All being well, by this evening I shall be basking in the comfortable armchair of victory and working audio file triggering! Watch this space…
Basking it IS!! Check it out…
Finally! Got the thing debugged and set it up at home and surprised the wife AND dog!! Here’s the final movie…
And then the installation with Jon Astbury with his Steppenwolf Book Cover and a bit of movie stuff and a bit of the old Tripwire firing off audio samples of quotes from the Hesse book…
Posted in Uncategorized on 28/10/2009 by raptorattack
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It’s A Fucking Chainsaw Thing…
