Over the Lighthouse Residency, an aim is to work on two more sculptural versions of Chameleon Prototype 08. We are also working with Kim Byers and Nadia Berthouze from the HCI lab at UCL to test how people are responding ’empathically’ to the different screens. Gordon Brand was at Lighthouse for the day yesterday – and we tested different shapes to project upon. We were in the secondary studio at Lighthouse – the same studio that I have been using to shoot new digital portraits. Gordon thinks that by Tuesday afternoon he might be able to have three secondary prototypes worked out. By the end of yesterday, we discussed having a screen with three layers. A back transparent layer with a slight concave shape. That feeds into a transluscent white flat surface. This meets a concave white surface that meets th flat surface in the middle.
I need to send Gordon some video to project on the experiments. I need to do this tomorrow. I am hoping that Gordon can deliver the screens on Tuesday afternoon.
I am having trouble with the cameras of the face tech reading technology… My firewire cameras don’t work with it. uSB cameras do work – but they don’t like dark light. I have bought a huge range of infrared lights but so far, other than putting them directly in front of the face – I can’t see a difference. I was hoping for more of a ‘flood’ of infra-red light. So far. not working. at all.
Gordon Brand has bought some pencil cam to test, and we are hoping to embed these in the screen. The placement of the cameras is difficult. Ultimately, the cameras want to be right in front of the face which ofcourse, doesn’t work conceptually at all. Both distracting, can’t see image, and more and more. don’t know how we will ever work through this. We need a zoom camera. More resolution. manual zoom, USB camera that copes well in dark light. I have gone through about seven cameras now. I am not sure where or if the type of camera I want exists.
