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ITP NIME 2011

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 02:37:00 -0500

Crotch FM

Amplified Drop-Crotch Pants based on Sumatran Randai folk theatre

December 11

8 - 11 pm

Three performers accompany music via FM radio by beating their amplified pants. ‘Drop It Like It’s Crotch’ will premiere at the ITP NIME show at Cameo Gallery.

Cameo Gallery
93 North 6th Street
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY

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The Pool by Valentina Camacho and Antonius Oktaviano...

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 13:10:00 -0500

The Pool

by Valentina Camacho and Antonius Oktaviano Wiriadjaja

The Pool brings a calm space for meditation, introspection and relaxation to the lobby of the IAC building. Swimmers break the surface, explore the 120 foot wide pool and interact with each other. It is a journey for both themselves and the audience.

Hosted by IAC for ITP
Tisch School of the Arts
New York University

ITP Presents
Big Screens

Friday, December 2, 2011
From 6:30pm to 8:30pm
IAC HQ. 555 W. 18th St. @11th Ave.

6:00 pm Doors open
6:30 pm First showing
7:15 pm Remarks
7:30 pm Second showing
(shows are identical)

RSVP by Tuesday, Nov 29
itp.rsvp@nyu.edu

http://itp.nyu.edu/bigscreens

I got to perform as Keyboard Cat channeling Lady Gaga today! One...

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 21:50:00 -0400

I got to perform as Keyboard Cat channeling Lady Gaga today! One more to cross off my bucket list. Thanks, ameliechucky, for letting me shove my hand up that lovely felt pussy cat!

I got to be part of Cyrus von Hochstetter’s awesome second...

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 22:50:06 -0400

I got to be part of Cyrus von Hochstetter’s awesome second musical instrument for NIME. He attached three vibration motors on Michael Colombo and yours truly and gave us simple rules for making noise depending on which buzzed. Colombo stole the show with “Tom Igoe. BlEaarARrGGhH.” My instruments broke before I got to document it, but it will be posted soon.

Testing (really) Big Screens

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 01:59:00 -0400

This semester, I am working with Valentina Camacho, a very good friend and awesome creative partner, on content for a 120-foot-long screen at the IAC building. This is the fifth year Dan Shiffman has offered the class, and he takes great lengths to make sure we don’t reinvent the wheel. He provided us with several strategies and templates for every software imaginable. We were able to put up content within the second week of class, and last week got to test out our project ideas on one third of the screen.

Valentina is an amazing illustrator. We created a storyboard, sketched out some scenes/characters and she vectorized them for our animation. But as soon as we put them up on screen, everything looked different. The colors were off, brush patterns were magnified and subtle vector graphics became off-putting.

Fortunately, our time in grad school has taught us to always have a plan B. The night before, ITP’s equipment room also happened to acquire a new waterproof case for the Lumix LX5. I walked away from my coding and jumped in the pool with some mardi gras beads. We rendered out a 3840 X 1080 video of the camera under a faucet, in the pool and in puddles outside my apartment. It was intended to be a simple test, but the results were very visually stunning.

We were both running pretty low on sleep, and the experience was surprisingly draining. Walking away, I think both of us had reservations about our original idea but didn’t want to bring it up. After a couple days, we looked back on our experience and had to admit defeat. Our first project is too ambitious, and although we are fans of linear narrative, it won’t work on this scale and dimension.

We are now producing more content from real footage of water, and perhaps with real-time manipulation from the viewers’ interaction. Hopefully in the next few weeks, things will come together. But before burying the fruits of our labor, I wanted to share the images we created, because they really do look beautiful. Just not on a Brobdingnagian scale… Now to concoct a plan C and D.

NIME Assignment: “Inspirational Sounds”: Bring a one...

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 23:30:00 -0400

NIME Assignment: “Inspirational Sounds”: Bring a one minute audio clip of music to share with the class and explain why you find it compelling. Try to identify the qualities that appeal to you or that make it well suited to the purpose for which you use it.

I chose to share a minute of music that I recorded while visiting Saturday morning Gamelan rehearsals at the pendopo (front hall) of the Mangkunegaran Palace, in Solo, Java, Indonesia.

I went there on my last day in Solo, with my friends Mas Jon and Mbak Nana. Because they’re two of Solo’s top students, we got in from the back door, hung around the courtyard and waited for the orchestra to invite us to play. There are two well known sets of Gamelan in the palace that were built in the 17th century. These instruments are considered holy and venerable spirits live within them. I was told that the ones we got to play with on the day I went is even older.

The sound was incredibly rich, and the rhythm and melodies are very different from the contemporary classical pieces we at New York’s Gamelan Kusuma Laras play. The kendhang (drums) is beat with tabuh (mallets), unlike contemporary kendhang playing. The balungan (melody) players are responsible for only two or three notes, but if they don’t get it correctly then the entire piece falls to pieces. The simplicity and sacredness make it feel primordial. And to think that people gathered here hundreds of years ago listening to the same music is intense. Listening to the recording does not quite capture the ethereal ambience of that Saturday morning, but noticing the chirping of birds, the shutter of my camera and the gaggle of tourists is an interesting side effect of recorded audio. They help settle me in that memory, which audio recorded in a studio would never do.

I made a terribly terrific faux pas by referring to Pak Hartono, descendant of the kings of Surakarta, in the formal. But he brushed it off and even invited me to play for the last two pieces. As soon as we finished, the crowd of elderly players rushed us from our seat to cover the instruments with thick red cloth. It’s to cover them from dust, they tell me. I also shot some video of the experience, but the sound quality was not as good and I needed to condense the 30 minutes of audio into a minute. The result is the MP3 above.

Electronic Design and Prototyping: Assignment 2

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 14:21:00 -0400

Assignment 2: Assemble a circuit on a perfboard.

I built a basic hackduino on a perfboard and stuffed it into a cookie box to celebrate my good friend Michelle’s birthday.

But she walked in as I was building it, which turned out to be a good thing because I needed her help setting up the bandsaw.

Many thanks to http://jos.ph/ for his awesome schematics and instructables.

Code taken from Tom Igoe’s Tone Output Using Arduino tutorial.

Electronic Design and Prototyping: Assignment 1

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 12:57:38 -0400

Assignment 1 for Electronic Design and Prototyping: Read a schematic and assemble circuit on a breadboard.

I don’t exactly know if that’s what it’s supposed to sound like, but I built this Tone Burst Generator based off of the schematics Paul Rothman provided.

Materials:

Schematics:

Wayang Kinect

Fri, 27 May 2011 15:36:00 -0400

A write up of my experience installing and displaying Wayang Kinect in the ITP Spring 2011 show is forthcoming… stay tuned!

Nature of Code: Final

Tue, 03 May 2011 02:47:00 -0400

This year, I have been learning as much as I can about the Javanese court arts, including music, dance and live theatre. Part of what interests me is how stories like the Ramayana and Mahabharata can be passed on for generations without the need of archival technology. Furthermore, different cultures at different times utilize different methods of storytelling in order to transmit them to the next generation.

The Wayang Kinect project is an exploration of storytelling ancient texts in new mediums. Using a Microsoft Kinect as a sensor, users are able to interact with and manipulate a digital puppet on a projected screen.

The web applet, which controls the puppets using the position of the mouse, can be found here. Full description, videos and code are after the jump.

Presentation Slides:

Wayang Kulit, which translates to “leather puppet”, are puppets made from ox hide and controlled with rods made of either bamboo or buffalo horn. Indonesian Shadow puppet theatre has been performed for over ten centuries and has been proclaimed by UNESCO as an “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity”.

The Wayang Kinect project will incorporate new technologies to tell traditional Wayang stories in an updated contemporary context while continuing to safeguard the traditions of Wayang Kulit theatre. Furthermore, the Microsoft Kinect can be utilized to record a well known dhalang (shadow puppeteer) and further preserve Wayang Kulit’s performative history.

The code for this project is based mainly on Daniel Shiffman’s examples from his Nature of Code course. I am utilizing OpenNI’s drivers to control the Kinect, and the fabulous Toxiclibs libraries to manipulate the pixel physics. I’ve been learning about Javanese music and shadow puppetry from members of the Gamelan Kusuma Laras Orchestra, to whom I am greatly indebted.

Videos:

A single user controlling the puppet

Two users, two puppets:

Code:

Digital Wayang with Kinect

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 21:31:46 -0400

Over the past few weeks I’ve been fooling around with the Microsoft Kinect. I spent a large chunk of my time installing all the software needed to use Sensebloom’s OSCeleton library by following Tohm Judson’s tutorial. Once everything was installed, I was frustrated the Processing examples provided by Sensebloom was giving me errors. Fortunately, I found out I wasn’t the only one. After renaming a few functions I got it to work perfectly (the fixed code is down below).

After some time, I got the example to work with Toxiclibs and was able to attach a puppet frame to a user’s hand after calibration. Video and the code after the jump.

Stickmanetic with toxiclibs

Stickmanetic working with PBox2D

Flowfield Changing over Time

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 21:43:57 -0400

Nature of Code Assignment: Create a flow field that changes over time.

I took Dan Shiffman’s flow field code and added a time function to change the perlin noise values over time.

The applet is found here.

Video of the applet in debug mode and the code found below.

Code:

SXSW 2011 (One Week Later)

Sun, 27 Mar 2011 15:37:00 -0400

This year I got to check out SXSW in Austin, TX for the entire festival. I mostly worked during the interactive portion, so most of the fun was had at day shows with friends. I discussed the interactive and film events at the art:21 blog, but didn’t cover nearly everything. I also didn’t finish processing the photos until today, to my friends’ dismay.

I had major gaps in my memory during the week, mostly after a Wu-Tang show. But my camera shows pictures of the kind strangers who helped me home via the E Bus.

Friday 3/18, Wye Oak played an awesome set at Mohawk. Their guitar and drum arrangement reminds me of a reverse gendered White Stripes, but with more enthused and dare I say more talented drumming. I’d definitely keep an ear out for them.

Speaking of enthusiasm, Bombay Bicycle Club finished the 3rd annual Music for Listeners line up with a crowd pleasing performance. They roped in random Texan cowboys walking by the pizzeria with sheer musicality alone.

At night, I got tired of waiting in lines to get into venues. So I mostly stuck with less crowded bars and walked randomly into an amateur strip show.

I can’t say enough nice things about Austinites and South By’ers. They’re so friendly they ask how are you’s with candid interest. They’re not a bad looking bunch either.

But admittedly some didn’t seem to enjoy the added traffic and party pollution.

Of all the venues I got to check out, St David’s Church was the most random - first of all it’s a church and we were all drinking. Secondly, the space was acoustically impossible. Laura Jansen made it work, however, stealing our hearts with her sung diary entries.

Sadly Austin cuisine didn’t really steal my heart or my gut, but two major food-related events stayed in my mind. Strangely even though I go to ITP I didn’t get to meet Clay Shirky until after his keynote about social media and the recent revolutions in the middle east. He kindly invited me to a dinner with ITP alumni despite the fact I’m still a student. And the second is Amy’s Ice Cream on S Congress, which I give cred for its adorable staff and for staying open late.

The last show I got to see was Uh Huh Her at the Continental Club, only a few hours before my flight home. It was a perfectly formed rock and roll ending to my incredible SXSW journey. By then, however, I was missing my beautiful New York City. Not even a 12 hour journey home due to bad weather could sour my mood when I lay on my own bed in Queens to crash.

Kusumalaras.org launch

Sun, 13 Mar 2011 16:03:00 -0400

I redesigned the website for my gamelan orchestra, New York City’s Gamelan Kusuma Laras and just got the OK to officially launch it at kusumalaras.org

It’s proudly powered by Wordpress and Thematic, but we felt it was more important to point out the orchestra is a non-profit organization and not distract with too many links.

ShiffHanoman

Tue, 08 Mar 2011 04:06:00 -0500

Midterm Assignment: Build off of the concepts we’ve covered this first half of the semester, however you should feel free to think non-traditionally, i.e. your midterm need not simply be a Processing sketch. Please include both visual and text documentation of your project, i.e. you might include a short paragraph description, links to relevant projects, video documentation, screenshots, or online applet, etc. The midterm need not be a finished project, it is useful to use this time to build out a single component of a larger idea.

The great monkey god Hanoman: http://code.antoni.us/noc/wayang_hanoman/

The great codemonkey god ShiffHanoman: http://code.antoni.us/noc/wayang_shiffhanoman/

~~Ed: The applets weren’t working, so I am posting an earlier draft with only the puppet’s frame: http://code.antoni.us/noc/wayangframe/~~ Ed 2: Fixed 3/14

I decided to build a puppet in processing based on Javanese Wayang Kulit. Wayang Kulit, which transliterates to “shadow leather”, are puppets made from ox hide and controlled with rods made of either bamboo or buffalo horn.

From: David Irvine’s Leather Gods & Wooden Heroes: Java’s Classical Wayang

Generally only the puppets arms have movable joints - on the shoulders, elbows and wrists. But shadow pupppeteers are known to be quite innovative and can tell a great story within the limitations of the medium.

I decided to break convention and allowed movement of the head. It currently looks bizarre without the neck following the head, but I enjoy the concept and would like to keep it. Things like the bobbing of ShiffHanoman’s head are what make this world of shadow pixels quite special.

I wanted to implement sound to the piece. Indonesian shadow puppet theatre is accompanied by Gamelan music, metal percussive instruments that generally follow a fractal melody. But I couldn’t figure out the math and need to wait until the second half of the semester. I started toying with the Toxilibs audio library, but may return to the Minim libraries for audio as it is a bit more documented.

From: Richard Pickvance’s A Gamelan Manual: A player’s guide to the central Javanese gamelan

Ultimately, I’d like to puppets to self-generate in a more random or algorithmic fashion, much like the adorable Nokia Friends. But of the two processing sketches, I found ShiffHanoman more interesting because of its puppetthropic features — the final interaction will definitely need capture an image of the user and incorporate aspects of the user into the puppet itself.

Video

Code:

DontGoChasing(waterfalls);

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 01:59:00 -0500

Assignment: Model a specific visual effect using a particle system — fire, smoke, explosion, waterfall, etc.

I wanted to pay tribute and homage to TLC’s Waterfalls 1994 music video, but I’ve been so focused on my stop-motion animation that I couldn’t spend time on this week’s Nature of Code assignment.

The end product isn’t at all what I was planning. Wrapping my head around inheritance and polymorphism is tougher than I expected. I guess I’ll stick to the rivers and the lakes that I’m used to.

Hanacaraka Stop Motion First Draft

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 22:18:00 -0500

I’m about halfway done with the first Methods of Motion Assignment: A stop-motion animation in the style of Lotte Reiniger’s Silhouette films.

We were supposed to shoot our principle shots for Methods of Motion by last Wednesday but I ran into several technical difficulties. I wanted to use a tota light with a soft box, but the ITP equipment room ran out of them. Also, I was using the Panasonic DVX with batteries because I couldn’t find an AC adapter, so the batteries kept running out. I ended up jerryrigging some clamp lights underneath a sheet of plastic with some paper on top. It created an interesting texture that I’m not sure I enjoy or not. One thing I do not enjoy, however, is the reflection of the fasteners, which could have been better controlled had I curtained off the rest of the lights in the room.

Another issue was the pole holding up the camera kept slipping, even though I taped them tight. While reviewing the final shots, I noticed the camera kept drifting downward, until at some point the Silhouette of the dowels I used to hold up the plastic ended up in the shot. I was also in such a rush that I didn’t realize the second camera had a dirty speck on the lens. Nevertheless, I managed to squeeze out 700 frames out of 14 hours of work.

The full, unedited clip without color correction and added anticipation moments is embedded below:

At this rate, it looks like it will take another 14 to edit the clip and another 7 for simple sound and music. So I don’t really have much excuse to slack off. But recently the IFC screened all the Oscar nominated shorts. Sadly Bill Plympton’s The Cow Who Wanted to Be A Hamburger didn’t make it past the short list. And although I’m usually fond of rooting for the underdog, Pixar’s entry was so charming and innovative it stole my heart. I wouldn’t complain if any of the other contenders win this year because they’re all so good, but my money’s definitely on Day & Night.

Dance Mover Dance

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 02:50:00 -0500

Assignment: Create a system of multiple bobs and spring connections. How would you have a Bob connected to a Bob with no fixed anchor?

I created an interactive wire puppet out of spring objects, inspired by Alexander Calder’s Aztec Josephine Baker (1929), which the Calder Foundation recently requested to withdraw from the Smithsonian as an act of protest against censorship. Code and video after the jump.

The code is butchered from Daniel Shiffman’s examples. Obviously, I still have much to learn about…physics. But kudos to Shiffman for reigniting my interests in…physics. It has been a while since I thought this much about…physics.

The code:

Run Mover Run

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 13:32:00 -0500

Assignment 2: Create pockets of air resistance / friction in a Processing sketch.

I updated a game I made this summer for Matt Parker’s class to include principles of friction.

Hana Caraka Storyboard and Script

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 00:33:00 -0500

Methods of Motion Assignment 1: Stop-Motion Frame by Frame Animation

Hana Caraka

Synopsis: The Javanese alphabet, also known as the Hanacaraka, is a holoalphabetic poem which translates to:

Hana caraka There (were) two messengers
data sawala (They) had animosity (among each other)
padha jayanya (They were) equally powerful (in fight)
maga bathanga Here are the corpses.

I plan to depict the Javanese script and the Latin alphabet as the two messengers in conflict. Throughout the animation, the story will be written out on screen in both Javanese and Western script. The first stanza of letters will transform into two silhouette puppets from their appropriate font: a Javanese shadow puppet (Wayang Kulit) and an 18th century European Silhouette portrait. The setting is also created in this manner. For instance, the Javanese letters may turn into palm trees and the Roman letters may turn into a tea cup. Most of the animation will be done in the style of Lotte Reiniger’s silhouette stop-motion films. But the climactic fight scene will be shot in the style of a Wayang Kulit battle, by attaching rods to move the puppets and their limbs in real-time.

Script:

Fade in

(1) Title Screen: Hana Caraka
Two elaborate gunungan (traditional Javanese leaf shaped shadow puppet) and a European 19th century lady’s hand fan cover the screen. The gunungan are removed, revealing Hana Caraka in Javanese script. Then the fan unfurls, revealing Hana Caraka in the Roman alphabet.

(2) Character faces formed
The letters move around on screen. The Javanese script morphs into a traditional female Wayang Kulit puppet, and the Western script group together in the shape of a 19th century lady’s silhouette.

(3) Zoom out to show the full characters
The puppets bow to each other.

(4) Setting: Data Sawala
More letters appear on the screen. They turn into the background and objects. Some form into teacups for the puppets. They drink.

(5) A Cultural Faux-pas. Zoom in on European Silhouette.
Conflict begins. The European silhouette is offended by the Javanese puppet’s bare feet and points at them disgustedly.

(6) Pan down to Javanese puppet’s feet, then pan up to Javanese puppet’s head.
Pointing is impolite in Javanese culture. The Javanese puppet takes this as a sign of hostility. The Javanese puppet throws her tea at the European silhouette.

(7) Back to scene as in (4)
They are visually angry at each other.

(8) Weapons: Pada Jayanya
Empty screen. Pada Jayanya appears in both Javanese and Western script. The European silhouette takes the Western script, and the Javanese puppet takes the Javanese script. The words turn into a Kris and a dagger.

(9) Wide pan as in (7) and (4)
Fight scene in the style of a Wayang Kulit battle. This goes on for some time until the puppets get really close and stab each other.

(10) Zoom in on puppets. Death: Maga Batanya
The puppets bleed out the letters Maga Batanya. They enact an elaborate and dramatic death scene.

(11) Wide Pan as in (4, 7 and 9)
Their bodies collapse into two piles of letters. Out of the piles, the letters Habis in Javanese and Roman alphabet float up to the middle of the screen.

(12) Habis - translates roughly to “It’s over.” Not really “The End.” (I will probably change this ending)

Fade Out

Slideshow: