These were the instructions:

Read these instructions before taking a piece of candy.

1. Run to the end of Pardall Rd. and back.
2. Repeat ten times.
3. Return to this spot.
4. Take a piece of candy.
5. Eat the piece of candy.
6. Dispose of the wrapper.
7. If you do not want to dispose of the wrapper, frame it on your wall to commemorate your participation in this interactive software art piece.
8. Walk away.
9. Do not come back.
10. Repeat ten times.

Here’s the video:

After this we both came up with the idea to combine our projects and do some kind of interactive street art project as main project for our whole class.

Project “Cupcakes!” was born!

The Concept

The main idea, is giving tipsy people on DelPlaya on a friday night the possibility to win a cupcake. In order to win a cupcake, these people have to beat some kind of Kinect controlled game. As soon as they beat the game, the Arduino will automatically unlock a box with cupcakes

We’re planning on videotaping the whole project, and we’re expecting a lot of funny and weird footage.

This little post here is actually just a quick writeup of our ideas, and I will keep editing it as our project progresses.

WW2 and ballistics gave us digital computers. Cold War decentralization gave us the Internet. Terrorism and mass surveillance: Kinect.

We’ve all heard a little bit about all the amazing applications that depth cameras like the Kinect make possible. But how can you use the Kinect as an interface for making art ? As I first read about my first project for software art in my Art Studio 7D class at UCSB, I immediately thought back to the days where I used a regular camera with an IR filter, an IR spot, a projector and a high end computer to write my own interactive software for the digital signage company I was working for. Later I started playing around with the Nintendo WiiMote but as I left the company I haven’t done anything in this field.

Until now.

I was always fascinated by the idea of interacting with a computer and not using a common peripheral device like mouse, keyboard or controller.

Many of you may know the movie Minority Report with Tom Cruise where he interacts with this futuristic computer interface just by using gestures. I always wanted to do something like this, but never had the technology or knowledge to do so. In 2010 Microsoft released a new technology called XBox Kinect which allows you to play games and control them with your body movements. Similar to Nintendo’s Wii or Sonys Move but completely without any physical device that you have to hold in your hands. Your body becomes the controller.

So here I am, 2 weeks ago. I have the technology, I have the knowledge and I have a project assignment due in 2 weeks. My idea was to make some kind of simple interactive art that looks cool and could work as my personal playground to do more advanced stuff later. Fortunately my TA Sterling Crispin had a Kinect and was willing to give it to me, so I could work on this project.

And then my journey began.

The Kinect and how it works

The Kinect is a depth camera . Normal cameras collect the light that bounces off of the objects in front of them. They turn this light into an image that resembles what we see with our own eyes. The Kinect, on the other hand, records the distance of the objects that are placed in front of it. It uses infrared light to create an image (a depth image ) that captures not what the objects look like, but where they are in space. In the next section of this introduction, I’ll explain how the Kinect actually works. I’ll describe what hardware it uses to capture this depth image and explain some of its limitations. But first I’d like to explain why you’d actually want a depth image. What can you do with a depth image that you can’t with a conventional color image?

First of all, a depth image is much easier for a computer to “understand” than a conventional color image. Any program that’s trying to understand an image starts with its pixels and tries to find and recognize the people and objects represented by them. If you’re a computer program and you’re looking at color pixels, it’s very difficult to differentiate objects and people. So much of the color of the pixels is determined by the light in the room at the time the image was captured, the aperture and color shift of the camera, and so on. How would you even know where one object begins and another ends, let alone which object was which and if there were any people present? In a depth image, on the other hand, the color of each pixel tells you how far that part of the image is from the camera. Since these values directly correspond to where the objects are in space, they’re much more useful in determining where one object begins, where another ends, and if there are any people around. Also, because of how the Kinect creates its depth image (about which you’ll learn more in a second) it is not sensitive to the light conditions in the room at the time it was captured. The Kinect will capture the same depth image in a bright room as in a pitch black one. This makes depth images more reliable and even easier for a computer program to understand.

My first approach: Quartz Composer

Now that you basically know, how the Kinect works it’ll be easier for you to understand what I was doing on my way to my final product. As I first started to work with the Kinect I already knew that I’ll have a hard time constraint. Everything was new for me, the hardware, the libraries and I haven’t done much programming in the last few months. So the first thing was getting the Kinect to talk with my Mac and get at least the RGB image.

Mac OS X comes shipped with a software called Quartz Composer which is part of the XCode developer bundle. To make it easier for me I’m just quoting the Apple website here:

Quartz Composer is a visual programming environment, included with Xcode, that allows you to quickly create sophisticated motion graphics compositions without having to write code. By simply connecting together building blocks of graphics processing functionality, you can rapidly design dynamic visualizations that, for example, combine images and real-time information over video feeds. After perfecting your composition, you can use Cocoa bindings to embed it into your application. Quartz Composer is also a great way to develop Image Units and OpenCL kernels.

Fortunately some great folks on the interwebs already made a Kinect plugin for Quartz Composer, so I could dive right in. After a couple hours of installing certain libraries and dependencies I finally got the Kinect working in Quartz Composer and were able to read all data and do some basic Skeleton tracking.

But this was pretty much everything I got done in QC. I tried a lot of different image processing stuff, but nothing really let me do what I wanted to do, so I had to move on and search for another option.

Processing and OpenKinect: The winning team.

In class we were always talking about that creative coding tool called Processing (http://processing.org). Again, to save me some time I’m just quoting from the processing homepage:

Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to create images, animations, and interactions. Initially developed to serve as a software sketchbook and to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context, Processing also has evolved into a tool for generating finished professional work. Today, there are tens of thousands of students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists who use Processing for learning, prototyping, and production.

Since processing uses a stripped down version of Java, and as some of you may know I HATE JAVA – I never really wanted to use it. But considering that already a week passed by, since I started playing around with the Kinect, and that using OpenFrameworks or Cinder or any of my other beloved C++ libraries for creative coding would take more time, than I actually had, I gave it a shot.

So getting everything downloaded and setup was pretty easy. Installing processing, getting a few libraries for interfacing with the Kinect, a library for a fluid and particle system, 2 bottles of coke zero and a large pizza and I was pretty much set.

After a few hours playing around with Processing and doing basic stuff, I started loving it. It’s easy, straightforward but still powerful. The Kinect plugin called SimpleOpenNI provided me with everything I needed. Access to all the images and the raw depth data, scene analysis and even hand and gesture recognition. I started off by trying to track the hands and use the data as reference to manipulate the particle system. But the hand recognition needed a little bit of “calibration” time and I wanted instant feedback in my software, so I went for a more simple approach: Detecting the closest point.

I already explained, how the Kinect works and I don’t want to repeat everything but I want to explain to you how you can find the closest point in an image:

Basically every pixel in the image has a depth value. The depth values are stored in a flat list with indexes. So what you have to do is look at every pixel in the image, calculate the index, read the depth value out of the raw depth data, and compare it to the other values. Of course, in practice it’s a little bit more complicated and involves a little bit more algorithmic design, but I don’t want to bore you with deep computer science insights and math.

Now that I have the closest point, I can use its coordinates as a reference to manipulate my particle animation. Because of certain technical difficulties and my really quick and dirty algorithms (did I say, that I had less then 24 hours left to complete the project at this point), the interaction with the particle system is a little bit rough, but it works.

I will definitely keep working on that and on other Kinect based projects within the next few weeks, so if you find that interesting stay tuned! Below you can see a video of the finished product and my friend interacting with it.

Nam June Paik: Participation TV (1963)

Creating an artwork or being artistic often involves using common things or common techniques in an uncommon way, to create something new, exciting or funny.

An early example is Nam June Paik’s Participation TV built in 1963

Paik transforms the omnipresent television – a consumer-targeted device emitting a unidirectional signal – into an interactive participatory space.

Today the internet is omnipresent, and webtechnologies are evolving rapidly over time. Mostly everybody has access to it and uses it for information, communication and entertainment. When we look at the technology behind it, we see that everything is very logical and streamline. Most websites are used to display information and make information accessible in an easy, fast and secure way. But some people are trying to use these technologies as medium for artistic expression.

Something similar to Paik’s Participation TV can be found on a website called DrawAStickman.com

When you first visit the website it asks you to draw a little stickman on a canvas. As soon as you click on done it drags you into an interactive story with your stickman as main character. It transforms your browser into an interactive canvas and you have to help your stickman solve little problems by drawing elements. It’s a perfect example for “out-of-the-box”-thinking and how you can use modern web technologies in an artistic context.

Have a look at this :

In my eyes this guy truly represents what it means to be a real marketer. And I don’t really want to say more about it, because all the twitters, facebooks and bloggios out there are already gossiping viciously about him. But I want to wish him all the luck in the world and he really inspired me to just act on one of my fancy ideas that I came up with in the last couple of years. Hopefully I’ll find the time to do it

And for more info on him and on his quest to land a job at google just check out his blog at http://matthew-epstein.com or follow him at Twitter (@MEtweetz).

Marcel over and out.

Before I get to the topic I want to say a few words: My blog is now up for a couple of weeks and I’ve been very lazy when it comes to posting stuff, sorry for that For a quite long time I didn’t really knew what to write about. I’m doing so much stuff here and get so much impressions, that I just can’t decide on a specific topic, because I always want to have some value or general sense in my posts (even if most of you are just interested in my experiences and life in California ). So today, it’s basically the first real entry in my new blog *hooray*. I want to write a little bit about the stuff, that we’re doing in a class called “Human Factors in Project Management”. And I want to write specifically about

The Keirsey Temperament Sorter (KTS-II)

Now you might think “What to hell?” and start rolling your eyes … but hold on and read and I’m sure you’ll find it quite interesting. But before I try to explain it by myself, here’s a short overview from the official site:

The Keirsey Temperament Sorter®-II (KTS®-II) is the most widely used personality instrument in the world. It is a powerful 70 question personality instrument that helps individuals discover their personality type. The KTS-II is based on Keirsey Temperament Theory™, published in the best-selling books, Please Understand Me® and Please Understand Me II, by Dr. David Keirsey. The KTS-II has been translated into 18 different languages, and has been used by over 40 million people from 140 different countries. It first appeared in Please Understand Me (1978), and was updated in the successor Please Understand Me II (1998). The KTS-II is currently being used by the Fortune 500, Global 1000, the US Government / Military, by major academic institutions, non-profit organizations, and faith-based organizations worldwide. According to Keirsey Temperament Theory, there are four basic temperament groups which describe human behavior. Keirsey’s four temperaments are referred to as Artisans™, Guardians™, Rationals™ and Idealists™. These four temperaments can be further subdivided, often referred to as “Character Types”. There are four types of Artisans, four types of Guardians, four types of Rationals, and four types of Idealists.

We’re using this test to discover our own position in a project team and how we interact with the other members. And as many of you know, I’m really sceptic about any type of automated and generalized tests whether it is an IQ-Test or something else. And after taking this test I was really surprised about how close the result was, according to my real personality (or better: to what I believe that my real personality is).

What is Temperament ?

Temperament is a configuration of observable personality traits, such as habits of communication, patterns of action, and sets of characteristic attitudes, values, and talents. It also encompasses personal needs, the kinds of contributions that individuals make in the workplace, and the roles they play in society. Dr. David Keirsey has identified mankind’s four basic temperaments as the Artisan, the Guardian, the Rational, and the Idealist Each temperament has its own unique qualities and shortcomings, strengths and challenges. What accounts for these differences? To use the idea of Temperament most effectively, it is important to understand that the four temperaments are not simply arbitrary collections of characteristics, but spring from an interaction of the two basic dimensions of human behavior: our communication and our action, our words and our deeds, or, simply, what we say and what we do.

The Four Temperaments

What am I ?

I’m an Idealist Teacher (ENFJ).

© Llima Orosa (Flickr)

The Idealist

As an Idealist I’m passionately concerned with personal growth and development. Idealists strive to discover who they are and how they can become their best possible self … always this quest for self-knowledge and self-improvement drives their imagination. And they want to help others make the journey. Idealists are naturally drawn to working with people, and whether in education or counseling, in social services or personnel work, in journalism or the ministry, they are gifted at helping others find their way in life, often inspiring them to grow as individuals and to fulfill their potentials.

The Teacher

Even more than the other Idealists,Teachers have a natural talent for leading students or trainees toward learning. Teachers (around two percent of the population) are able to dream up fascinating learning activities for their students to engage in. In some Teachers, this ability to fire the imagination can amount to a kind of genius which other types find hard to emulate. But perhaps their greatest strength lies in their belief in their students. Teachers look for the best in their students, and communicate clearly that each one has untold potential, and this confidence can inspire their students to grow and develop more than they ever thought possible. Warmly outgoing, and perhaps the most expressive of all the types, Teachers are remarkably good with language, especially when communicating in speech, face to face. And they do not hesitate to speak out and let their feelings be known. Bubbling with enthusiasm, Teachers will voice their passions with dramatic flourish, and can, with practice, become charismatic public speakers. This verbal ability gives Teachers a good deal of influence in groups, and they are often asked to take a leadership role. Valuing as they do interpersonal cooperation and harmonious relations, Teachers are extraordinarily tolerant of others, are easy to get along with, and are usually popular wherever they are. Teachers are highly sensitive to others, which is to say their intuition tends to be well-developed. Certainly their insight into themselves and others is unparalleled. Without a doubt, they know what is going on inside themselves, and they can read other people with uncanny accuracy. Teachers also identify with others quite easily, and will actually find themselves picking up the characteristics, emotions, and beliefs of those around them. Because they slip almost unconsciously into other people’s skin in this way, Teachers feel closely connected with those around them, and thus show a sincere interest in the joys and problems of their employees, colleagues, students, clients, and loved ones.

Conclusion

As I said above, I was highly surprised by the result as it describes in most parts, what I think about myself. I’m really happy with being an Idealist Teacher. It helps me a lot when it comes to interacting with people and to get a clue about their feelings, needs and thoughts. Often people come to me and talk about their problems, because they appreciate that I’m a good listener. I’ve often the feeling, that I really understand other people and can help them, which makes me very happy. Most of them are really appreciating my advises an thoughts and I’m happy that I can share all my experiences with them. Since years now I’m looking back on different times of my life and try to analyze special situations and rethink my decisions to get a clue about how I could improve my future decisions. In fact, most of the time I can’t use this knowledge to control my own decisions because I’m extremely driven by feelings and my imagination but as long as I can help other people I will continuing analyzing my life

Marcel over and out

P.s: For those who want to take the Test and discover your Keirsey type, checkout this link: Jung Typology Test (KTS-II) on HumanMetrics

Take a drive baby up the coast, yea highway 101
Ill pass Ventura and Santa Barbara too, just as fast as my motor runs
Gotta pocket full of memories, some happy and some are sad
Gotta girl standin by my side through the good times and the bad

Chorus:
Listen to the boulevard, listen to the falling rain
I believe in love now, with all of its joys and pains

Sick boy, sick girl, looking nice dressed up on a Saturday night
Take a walk downtown for a while and chase the pale moonlight
I can still hear the mission bells and the train rollin through your town
Gonna leave this world behind, were Southern California bound

Chorus: x 2
Listen to the boulevard, listen to the falling rain
I believe in love now, with all of its joys and pains
Follow the palm trees under the California sun
I believe in love now, I believe in love again

A few things I’ve learned on my travels through this crazy little thing called life:

One – a morning of awkwardness is far better than a night of loneliness.

Two – I probably won’t go down in history, but I will go down on your sister.

And 3 - while I’m down there it might be nice to see a hint of pubis. I’m not talking about a huge 70′s Playboy bush or anything. Just something that reminds me that I’m performing cunnilingus on an adult. But I guess the larger question is why is the city of angels so hell bent on destroying its female population.

Welcome to California !