Final project progress update 1

Now that we have formed an idea we are all pleased with, it was time to get to work! We met up with Morgan to learn Arduino. After a bit of tinkering and programming, we were able to successfully hook up an accelerometer and get meaningful data, which really made me think that we could complete this project. On Wednesday, I started learning Max and how to actually generate sound programatically. Working with Morgan, we were able to actually control some of the elements of the sound though UDP on my phone. Max is not as difficult as I thought it was going to be, and again the early success was very encouraging.

We also added Alex to our group! I am very excited to have him working with us and I think the experience he brings and passion he has for microprocessors will be very valuable for us.

I had an idea to solve our problem about not having enough input on the Arduino board. I found an Android app that takes data from the phones sensor and sends it to Max. It includes orientation  an accelerometer, and a digital compass. If we simply put the phone in a pocket on her costume, we could use an Android phone to free up some spots on our board. I'll pitch this to the group in class tomorrow!

Final Project Planning

After talking to the professors with our idea last week, we knew we would have to refine our concept. In order for us to all get on the same page with something we would want to work on for the rest of the semester, we met up at Sweet Eugene's. The result was that we now have an idea that I think we are all very excited about and that the professors will get on board with.

We have decided to interpret the "play" theme by having the dancer play music for the audience. There will be around six Arduino sensors on the dancer's body, each controlling different aspects of the music. The important thing is that all of these sensors capture a range of inputs so that the quality of the dancer's movement is what changes the music, as opposed to a binary control of the music. The focus will be on the music, so the visual part of this project will be a minimal effect, which will allow the audience to focus on the connection between the dance and the tune. In order to have audience participation and to help with their understanding of the mappings between the sensors and the auditory output, we will have a duplicate set of sensors that can be played around with when the performance is complete.

Thoughts on Dance-inspired technology, technology-inspired dance

One thing I had not really given much consideration to before reading this was the audience's perspective. As the author says, "designers of interactive dance must not only design for the dancers’ interaction with the interactive media, but must equally consider the intent of the choreography and how the dance will be experienced by the audience." When working on such short paced projects, it is difficult to see beyond the dancer. What I mean by that is that since dance is such a new medium for me, I use a lot of my effort trying to see how my technology can augment the dancer. However, I haven't really thought much about how the work as a whole is experienced by the audience. One of my goals with computer science is to focus on the user, but hopefully for the final project I will not only see the dancer as the user, but also the audience.

Sketch Two

For Sketch Two, we initially had big plans of having a detailed scene in which there would be a river flowing through a landscape, over which there would be a bridge. The dancer would mostly interact with the bridge, and a flock of birds would accompany her, kind of like in Snow White. Also, like in the Disney movies, she would be creating harmonious music (the reason the birds would join her). However, we scaled it down quite a bit as a result of the very limited time we had. Instead, the premise evolved into having a keyboard projected onto the ground (pictured right) with a flock of music notes on the wall behind the dancer. This time, we wanted the dancer to create harsh, discordant music that would contrast with the music that the music notes were "making", causing them to try to attack her.

The implementation had several roadblocks, mostly due to the limiting factors of using two Kinect systems. We found that it is difficult to get the level of precision we were hoping for. Having two Kinects meant that the data we were getting was noisy and distorted. The network for sending the data and the computers that were acting as the server and clients were also slower than what we wanted. Below is a video showing Michael playing with a prototype.