Interactive Multimedia Blog

The Interactive Multimedia blog has postings about new media including code and tutorials primarily in Adobe Flash. There are also events and pictures that relate to the Sheridan Interactive Multimedia one year post grad program where I teach.

Currently pictured on the front are some of the older works. An artist is using a touch screen wall display to draw with Mike Balder’s voice sensitive drawing application built in Flash. As she (or collaborators) make louder noises, the brush strokes get fatter or depending on the setting, more opaque. This picture is from the Interactive Interactive show. The picture on the right shows a music application by Kim Cullion that captures the users gesture motion with a $10 web cam. The Motion Cursor classes I made create a motion cursor which can be used to play notes on a musical staff.

If you are interested in multimedia or further information about our program, please visit:

• http://interactivemultimedia.wordpress.com (blog) or
• ttp://imm.sheridanc.on.ca (IMM site)

-08-

Blending, Branching, Affecting and Tracking Video, Video Motion Capture, Dynamic Frequency Lip Synch and ActionScript Classes

I’ve been developing a few new courses – well new for me – in our Sheridan Interactive Multimedia one-year Post Grad Program in Oakville Ontario between Hamilton and Toronto.

• http://imm.sheridanc.on.ca
• http://interactivemultimedia.wordpress.com

These are Audio Video (AV) and Motion Graphics (MG). In first term AV I wanted to turn away from making movies and move to interactive video. I gave this some thought and broke Interactive Video down into the following – click for samples except the Tracking one which is fairly traditional and I had the students create samples – I’ve been doing that since the 1995 McLuhan CD:

• Affecting Video – i.e. Blurring Flash Video as Cursor Moves
• Blending Video – i.e. Putting one video on top of another
• Branching Video – i.e. Playing different video depending…
• Tracking Video – applying and letting users apply cue points
• Motion Capture – with a $10 video cam and Flash alone…

For this last category, we did a joint project with the multimedia pioneering class I teach to make Big Interactive prototypes where people just wave at a $10 Web cam to interact with the features. This is accomplished with a MotionCursor ActionScript Class – to be launched one day. We put on a show called Interactive Interactive that highlighted these:

• Interactive Interactive – Art Technology Show Pictures

In the second term Motion Graphics course I have created the traditional bouncing balls with stretch and squash but made them interactive. This was just a quick exercise to show the Flash Tween Class. It does not behave exactly like real life but you can pick up the ball and throw it around

• Dynamic Animated Ball Example
  

I also made a tool and set of ActionScript Classes to scrub audio and apply markers or cue points and in particular to apply common mouth shapes to sounds to affect lip synching. This tool is to be used at Authoring time so the example is in a sense disabled but you can imagine how it would work by scrubbing the timeline and placing markers – the record button will not work for you.

• Scrubbing Lip Synch Example – Record Disabled

Perhaps not as effective but more efficient is using sound frequency analysis to activate lip synching. A very quick example is shown here where data is brought from Spectrum Lab into Flash:

• Frequency Analysis Lip Synch Example
  

And then just recently I’ve been working on the old animated mask stuff to create a sample class for Focuso… Please see the next post or click the link here:

• http://www.danzen.com/focuso

Still to come, DVD authoring. A few students and I went up to Collingwood to video the Canadian Summer Olympic Team during their spirit building and preparations for 2008 Beijing Games. We took 30 hours of video and made a DVD in Adobe Encore. It was quite an amazing experience. You can read about it here:

• Sheridan IMM Makes DVD for Olympic Team

I’m also in the middle of building (just about done) and online Chess game using ActionScript 2 Classes – it will be launched as Zen Chess soon.

And I have started in on code name SspotT – a Flash based MySpace – so that is a fairly large project that will probably take the summer. I’m working on that with my friend Aron who is programming the back end – he wants to.

Dan

Interactive Interactive II II Pictures

Interactive Interactive II II (Four) happened on the weekend and it was a success. It is an interactive art show in a gallery space (the Hamilton Artist Inc.) where we pit Sheridan Interactive Multimedia and McMaster Multimedia students against one another (actually provide a top prize for each).

Work is experienced on SMART boards which are large, projected on and touch screens. So people use their fingers to manipulate work and create content.

The full report and pictures (look under Event Photos) can be found here: http://www.danzen.com/ii.

I think the highlight of the show was the drawing tools where artists came up and used the application to make art – specifically Mike Balder’s application where you use the microphone as input to change the size of the pen as you draw. Some amazing works were created with this tool that night. See the pictures for examples. The above picture is one too.

It is a very successful show and highlights our mandate at Sheridan Interactive Multimedia where our grads provide environments in which people can create content and communicate.