Digital Soiree – Michael de Jager
Will Demo and speak about the game zX, which forms part of his practice component for his research Thesis in Digital Arts.

Date: Wednesday 14 March 2012
Time: 13:15 – 14:00
Place: Digital Arts Convent Building, opposite Wits School of the Arts

All Welcome

Visiting Speaker Jossekin Beilharz
Object identification and Pose Recognition on a Pressure-Sensitive Multi-Touch Floor.

Date: Tuesday 21st Feburary 2012
Time: 13:15 – 14:00
Place: Digital Arts Convent Building, opposite Wits School of the Arts

” We propose a new approach to tracking users, objects, and activities in a smart room. Unlike traditional approaches that point cameras into the 3D volume of a room, we provide all horizontal surfaces with touch sensitivity, including chairs, tables, and the floor. Gravity pushes people and objects against these surfaces, causing them to leave imprints, i.e., pressure distributions across the surface. We demonstrate how to decompose these imprints into the object and pose that caused them. The particular “perspective” reduces occlusion issues faced by regular and depth cameras. It also limits the freedom of objects from rotation and translation in 3D to rotation and translation on a plane, which allows us to recognize objects using simpler and potentially more reliable matching algorithms. We present our 8m2  floor installation, a set of active and a set of passive touch-sensitive furniture, as well as the algorithms we created for recognizing objects and poses.”

About Jossekin Beilharz:
Currently working at SAP Research, Pretoria and a member of House4Hack, Centurion. A masters student of IT-Systems Engineering at Hasso-Platter-Institute at the University of Potsdam. He worked on gravitySpace with Prof. Patrick Baudisch, chair of the Human Computer Interaction Lab at HPI in 2010-2011 and initiated a Random Hacks of Kindness event in Pretoria.

The exhibition nullPointerException is made up of four interactive pieces developed in Open Frameworks. Grotepass has used a Microsoft XBox Kinect sensor for each of the four individual pieces. The pieces explore the relationship between code, developer and audience, expanding on what is seen externally and what is developed artistically internally in the code. Each piece speaks to process and engagement, the titles indicating the area of exploration:  comment_compile, interface_instead, commit_often and init_before. Full descriptions and photo’s can be found on the nullPointerException site.

The exhibition opening was a massive success and the pieces run effortlessly with live interaction. I highly recommend a visit if you are in the Western Cape.

All welcome, please join us at the Digital Arts Division next week.

Workshop with Fancisco Lopez, James Webb, Joao Orrechia, Lucas Ligeti
Digital Arts Seminar Room, Wits School of the Arts
Thursday 11th August 2011
10:00 – 16:00
Facebook Invite

Concert: Fancisco Lopez and  James Webb
Alexander Theater, Braamfontien
Friday 12th August
19:00

For more information please contact me (Tegan) at the Digital Arts Division or visit Nathaniel’s Website nathanielstern.com

In this Remote Lecture:
DATA IS BEAUTY – Haythem Zakaria a 27-year-old
Tunisian artist, living in France for two years.  Predominately inspired
by Sufi, Zakaria moved recently towards real time experiments with
generative devices. Operating the intermediality of his discipline, he
offers unique visuals creations and interactive installations. Zakaria will be speaking about his work and practice.  Interactive
installation with real time sensor sensory / / single screen / / audio
stereo:

Wednesday 8th June at 18:30 at the Digital Arts Division at Wits University.
For more information on this and other Remote Lectures – as well as the live streaming for the night.
Visit: www.digitalarts.wits.ac.za/remote

by Haythem Zakaria

In this Remote Lecture:
Tamiko Thiel’s interactive 3D installations are 3D virtual worlds in which users’ own movements and decisions trigger the dramatic structure of the experience. Using examples from these works, Thiel will talk about what she considers to be the unique dramatic characteristics of this medium.

Tuesday 17th at 18:00 at the Digital Arts Division at Wits University.
For more information on this and other Remote Lectures – as well as the live streaming for the night.
Visit: www.digitalarts.wits.ac.za/remote

Still from “Beyond Manzanar” Tamiko Thiel

The outcome of the workshop was for each student to develop a proof of concept for an installation that used interactive video or computer vision techniques. This was the first time that students put to use some of their recent programming and lighting skills to solving computer vision problems – everything from edge detection, color tracking, motion detection and face detection. The workshop and following project were very very successful and we look forward to having Vaughn here again.

(all pictures: Tegan Bristow)

Vaughn setting up for workshop.

Vaughn on color light theory.

Playing and performing with light.

Jess Foli’s exploration of light in performance.

*  And some (please note not all 7 projects are represented) of the project outcomes from the workshop:

1 & 2 of Alexander Jone’s Interactive Running application.

Lisa van Vliet’s Digitally Augmented Shadow Puppetry.

Jess Foli getting ready to show us how her interactive Hop Scotch works.

I’m re-blogging this from Andrew’s blog soundplusdesign – the “Motor-Bike Man Post”.

We are having alot fun, even though it is slow fun. We now meet once a week and Joao has joined us too! For the time being we are very gratefully using what the Open FrameWorks community is sharing and slowly getting a sense of what it is we need to make for our own project.

Along side manifesting this project for ourselves as a way to learn more about the Kinect. Maia is in process of finding ways to use the Kinect in her installations and I’m comfortable enough (and excited) to include Kinect in this years MA course work program.

So watch this space!

Hackinect Wednesdays are an off-shot of the Hacksaws Art and Technology group supported by the Digital Arts Division at Wits School of Art and Upgrade! Joburg. Please contact us if you are interested in joining in.

Enjoy!