Its been a really busy time – today is Friday, the 6th Day of the residency. I have a fantastic time yesterday with Gordon – working through ideas, playing, experimenting. Gordon is a great person to discuss ideas with and work through how to make things happen. He is informative, inventive and also passionate about what he is doing. I wish I had more time to spend at the Rapid prototyping lab. The possibilities are exciting. The results are exciting – simple but seductive – feels perfect for the portraits, they reveal themselves and blur war – they look like they are peering in from a misty window. . We hope to move to the second sage of the rapid prototyping on Tuesday – maybe hanging the work next week and bringing the HCI guys in to test it out. Jane, Gordon and I spent quite a few hours discussing size, placement of camera, lighting, shape, projection placement, and creating a more, sculptural screen. The results felt good – like these portraits were revealing themselves and hiding themselves. It really suited the thematics of the work.
We talked about introducing touch to the screen – but how to go about it – I am at a stage where I need to simplify this project, not introduce more elements into it. But the way we were grabbing the screen – Reaching forward with two hands to touch it – in that action of intention – there was something really beautiful – I will discuss it further today with Jeff Mann who is building the video engine. I am also discussing with Jeff the option of using two screens running from one machine. It would really cut the tech costs of the project. Hopefully we can start doing tests by next week.
Jeff has written a patch so the work talks to the pixy project. He has done a great job of it.
Michael Roy, from EE was here all night last night trying to get the pixy screen to work. We are running about two days behind schedule. Its been difficult – first was hung and then with the worng view point – to view it you needed to be in the other room. Then getting it to work properly has taken a lot of dedication from Micheal and natacha. However, now its running it looks good – we are just about to connect it to the Chameleon video engine. I hope it works OK. Michael has been tired – he seems and a little stressed about it all, but now its running, he seems to have relaxed. He is laughing now, smiling.
We have had a lot going on, and making sure everyone feels included in the process has been at the forefront of my mind. We are hear to experiment and play, and keeping the ‘environment’ happy is crucial to people feeling like they can explore and share ideas.
