Wiimote Finger Tracking Music Controller

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7uLuYG62sY&fmt=18]

The Evolution Control Committee has been doing live mashup performances for many years and recently upgraded their hardware. Inspired by [Johnny Lee]’s Wiimote whiteboard, they built a rear projection display they could use during performances. It displays a dense collection of samples in Ableton Live. On each of the performer’s hands is an IR LED mounted to a thimble. By touching the thumb to the forefinger, the LED turns on. Two Wiimotes watch for these IR flashes to trigger mouse clicks. [TradeMark G] found the Ableton display too complex to navigate quickly and accurately with a mouse; this new display make things much easier and enjoyable.

[via Laughing Squid]

Tbeta, Cross-platform Multitouch

[vimeo=http://vimeo.com/2034557]

tbeta is a new tool developed by the NUI Group Community. tbeta acts as an image processing layer to take in image data and output tracking data for multitouch applications. Whether FTIR or DI, scratch built multitouch systems generate IR video streams that need to be processed to find fingertips. tbeta can take this or any arbitrary video stream and run it through a series of filters to generate the touch data. This data is sent as OSC TUIO, a standard protocol for touch events. Along with the camera and input switcher, tbeta also aids in system calibration. I works on Windows, OSX, and Linux. Have a look at the getting started guide for a better idea of how it works.

[via CDM]

Advanced Beauty Generative Video Art

advbeau

Advanced Beauty is a collection of 18 “sound sculptures” pairing artists and programmers to create a collaborative work visualizing sound. The styles run a broad range from fluid simulations to manipulating cell animation. The demos were built using Processing. While all of these were built using human input, we see potential for them to help improve standard visualizers. Hopefully, to bring out more information about what’s actually being played. Below is just one of the videos in the series. You can find more on Vimeo. Continue reading “Advanced Beauty Generative Video Art”

Stupidly Huge POV Display

pov_gear

[Mario Mauerer] and friends were commissioned to build this 2m persistence of vision display (translated) for a party (in a hight-voltage lab no less). Dubbed “Display from Hell”, it uses 100 blue SMD LEDs to generate the POV images. They’re connected to an ATMega64 via shift registers. Their target speed is 600rpm for a flicker free image, which means the propeller tips are moving at 140mph. The board can be updated wirelessly via IRDA and plans for adding SD storage are in place. You have to see and HEAR this thing in the video embedded below. Continue reading “Stupidly Huge POV Display”

YouTube Testing Even Higher Quality Videos

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY&fmt=22]

YouTube, purveyor of some of worst looking flash video is finally getting their act together. We posted the other day about embedding videos using &fmt=18 to get higher quality YouTube videos. It seems the awesome knob has now been turned up to &fmt=22. All of the previous tricks should work, just use 22 instead of 18. This all depends on the highdef version being available. Now they just need to get rid of the grainy preview images.