Hi all,Just bumping this thread to keep it in mind. I’m happy to draw something up, but it would be great if someone with some inDesign (or Adobe Illustrator, or Gimp) chops could render it as something a bit more legible. I’m afraid my drawings tend to be a bit crude !—Garrett L. Johnson
Musicology MA candidate @ ASUSynthesis Center - research assistantLORKAS (laptop orchestra of arizona state) - director__On Nov 24, 2014, at 11:20 AM, Xin Wei Sha <Xinwei.Sha@asu.edu> wrote:Hi Garrett, Chris, Mike,I asked Connor to label the machines and draw a machine diagram.Can you please update this — drawing a more complete one on the same whiteboard.Then someone can take a photo and xfer to the SC private website.*Let’s make up the launch cheat sheets first as paper post-its, then write up as a desktop README?That way we can customize the launch protocol and instructions by type of user:AdministratorSynthesis DeveloperSynthesis GuestXin Wei* Here is the PUBLIC website, launched as of yesterday (!) http://synthesis.ame.asu.edu<IMG_3521.jpeg>________________________________________________________________________________________Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts + Fulton Schools of Engineering • ASUskype: shaxinwei • mobile: +1-650-815-9962Founding Director, Topological Media Lab • topologicalmedialab.net/_________________________________________________________________________________________________
** TAIN BARZSO: HOW TO connect to the Synthesis net fileserver shares:
1. Browse to sslvpn.asu.edu
This site should attempt an automatic installation of the Cisco AnyConnect
Secure Mobility Client. From my experience, it rarely works. If/when it
fails, you will have the option to manually download the software. Please
do so.
2. After installing and running, it will ask you for a server name. This
will be, again, sslvpn.asu.edu
3. When it asks for username and password, use your ASURITE credentials.
At this point, you will be connected to the ASU VPN network.
4. Connect to the share afp://amenas.dhcp.asu.edu
Username: synthesis
Password: ( ask Ozzie, assuming you are eligible according to our research access policy )
Connect to share name "Synthesis"
From: Teoma Naccarato <teomajn@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Rhythm workshop # 2: Heartbeat, February or January 2015
Date: November 19, 2014 at 1:41:34 AM MST
To: Sha Xin Wei <shaxinwei@gmail.com>
Cc: John MacCallum <john.m@ccallum.com>, Pavan Turaga <pturaga@asu.edu>, Michael Krzyzaniak <mkrzyzan@asu.edu>, Julian Stein <julian.stein@gmail.com>, synthesis-operations@googlegroups.com
Hi Xin Wei and company,
Apologies for our delayed response… we just returned (to Paris) from England where we gave talks at the MIPTL lab at Sussex University, and the Digital Studio Lab at Goldsmiths (Freida says hello!). I hope the Rhythm Workshop is going well this week!
Xin Wei, we are looking forward to the “Rhythm Workshop Part 2” you have proposed. It will be great to learn about the rhythm measurement and analysis tools being developed at AME. Our software and hardware tools for sensing, processing, and documenting cardiac and respiratory activity during a range of body motion are developing well, thanks to John and Adrian, as well Emmanuel Fletty here at IRCAM.
We are wondering if it would be a possibility to spend one or two weeks either prior to or after the collective workshop as a residency at the Synthesis Lab to focus on questions and tools specific to our project. We would love to give a presentation of our work to date, and guide focused research experiments with interested participants at the lab, and in music and dance. Would this be of interest?
Some questions that are guiding our current research at IRCAM, and that we hope to share with collaborators AME in the New Year include:
1. What patterns of temporal correlation between cardiac, respiratory, and nervous function - during a range of physical activities and conditions - can be measured and observed via bio-sensing?
2. How can such patterns be used to choreograph and compose intentional arcs in the heart activity of performers over time?
3. How do humans and media negotiate between:
i. Internal, felt sense of time - as perceived
ii. Performative time - as realized
iii. Score time - as prescribed
4. To what extent does the existence of a feedback loop between humans and media – real or perceived – impact the experience of performers, and of observers?
We look forward to discussing further. Thank you very much!
Best wishes,
Teoma and John
Hello all,I just pushed some new things to the O4.synthesis github repository. This features a major overhaul of the rhythm tools which has been in the works for several months now. This system as a whole is both more stable and flexible, and should be better catered to the research upcoming this month and beyond. Several examples are included within the bundle, and more documentation will come soon (hopefully this week). As discussed with a few of you, I'll try to make myself as available I can to help get these things up and running from afar. :)Also included in the O4.rhyth_abs is a folder labeled o4.track. This features a simple system for recording and playing video with a synchronized osc data stream.best,Julian
Jinx, Julian! Please send that patch my way as well.EvanOn Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 6:35 PM, Evan Montpellier <evan.montpellier@gmail.com> wrote:Hello all,Mike, forwarding a conversation from February on a related topic (see below) - apologies if you've seen it before. A decent video recording patch (never mind one with recording and syncing of accompanying data) is a glaring absence from the current ASU/TML repertoire, at least as far as I'm aware. In terms of the video aspect, I'd like to build something around the Hap codec developed by Vidvox (Max implementationhere), since it seems like the best solution for high-efficiency playback (Hap clips are read directly onto the GPU) - although I welcome alternate suggestions!
EvanOn Thu, Feb 6, 2014 at 4:24 PM, <adrian@adrianfreed.com> wrote:qmetro just adds jitter and latency unless the machine is loaded in
which case an indeterminate number of frames will be dropped. In fact
the whole
notion of frame rate is corrupted in Jitter because when times get tough
it just grabs a frame from a buffer that is being overwritten.
I vaguely remember that there is a flag in one of the objects that tries
to suppress this (jit.grab or jit.record or something like that).
As for Xin Wei's wish I can say that there is nothing but silly
technical silos in the way of recording video streams along with the
OSC context with o.record. Transcoding to OSC blobs is the quick way to
do this and was in fact why the BLOB type is part of OSC.
Jeff Lubow here at CNMAT is interested in this sort of thing. We should
add a function to the "o." library that transcodes a jitter matrix
as a BLOB. It is more glamorous to truly translate between the formats
but for Xin Wei's purpose simply viewing OSC bundles as an
encapsulation format is sufficient.
We have another project that will soon need this so I will try to scare
up some cycles to move it along.
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: documenting the discussions and exercises
> From: Sha Xin Wei <shaxinwei@gmail.com>
> Date: Thu, February 06, 2014 3:32 am
>>
> [I’m widening this very thin technical thread to AME colleagues who may also have a stake in journaled monitored video + sensor data streams in OSC / Max-MSP-Jitter for research purposes. - Xin Wei ]
>
> Thanks Julian. Does qmetro introduce accumulating drift or “merely” local indeterminacy in time? If it’s accumulating then we have a problem that may require ugly hacks like restart and stitching files.
>
> Just remember that for this work I do not care to have msec sync. Very coarse sync between low-res video and the OSC stream is good enough for the sort of eyeballing I have in mind. We need the OSC streams to stay in sync but the heavy media (video+video) stream is merely there for the human to imagine and talk about what was going on on the floor at that time. Imagine scrolling through time (in Jamoma CueManager or autopattr interpolator) and always being able to see a small video showing what was going on at that time.
>
> If I had truly godlike power — like the authors of OSC and o.dot -- I’d like to not only build time tags into the OSC standard, but some human-readable representation of the scene — i.e. a “photo / video" track. So by default, in addition to the torrents of numbers, there’s always a way to see what the hell was going on in human-legible physical space at any OSC-moment. This is not a rational engineering desire but an experimentalist’s desire :)
>
> Ideally the video would be the same as the input video feeds, so you can develop offline months later, and basically run the recorded input video and all sensor input against the modified code. That way you can “reuse” the live activity in order to develop refined activity feature detectors and new synthesis instruments ourselves with out the expense of flying together everyone for technical work. It’s a practical workflow matter of letting the technical development and the physical play interleave with less stuttering.
>
> IMHO, it is crucial for TML that O4 engineers make instruments that collaborating dancers, paper artists, interior design students, stroke rehab experimenters all over the world can use without you guys babysitting at the console.
>
>
> Julian, if you run short on time, you might confer with local experts — students of Garth and Todd or Pavan — or John?
>
> Happy to see you all soon!
> Xin Wei
>
> On Feb 5, 2014, at 7:33 PM, Julian Stein <julian.stein@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > sure, I'll see what I can do with this -- probably makes most sense to use the o.table object. I'll keep in mind Adrian's concerns with qmetro. Perhaps I can synchronize the osc data and the jitter material with the same clock?
> >
> > best,
> >
> > Julian
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 7:49 PM, Sha Xin Wei <shaxinwei@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Speaking of videos,
> >
> > A lot of the videos we shoot for “documentation” is inadequate for scientific / phenomenological work .
> > What we must do this time around is to simultaneously record
> >
> > VIDEO (low res for human eyeballing)
> > All OSC streams.
> >
> > Is this easy with Jamoma CueManager?
> >
> > Julian do you have, or can you write this tool that stores all OSC streams in sync with al input videos (which can be low resolution), consulting Navid? It’d be good to test it with an ASU student before coming here — Chinmay perhaps.
> >
> > • We need to recruit a reliable team of documenters to
> > — baby sit the video streams or time-lapse (it could even be 4 iPhone cameras running time lapse of still shots, or we could borrow some fancier gear)
> > — replay the buffer at the end o f every session (or whenever asked for my the participants)
> > — Take text notes at the Recap hours(12-1, and 4-5 every day. There’s an error in the calendar which had the Afternoon sessions too long 2-6.)
> >
> > I cc Chris as the coordinator. "Freed, Inigo" <inigo.freed@prescott.edu>, Adrian’s son, offered to bring a video team down from Prescott AZ to ASU for the workshop. I’m not sure that will work bc we need volunteer participants to ruin these cameras 4 + hours day x 3 weeks.
> >
> > IN fact, Adrian said based on his experience, that to really capture a lot of subtleties we should roll cameras before anyone steps in to the room. I totally agree. It introduces a lot of phenomenological framing to “set things up” and then check ___ then “roll camera” This model works of reframed art like cinema production, but does not work for studying the phenomenology of event
> >
> > Q: Do we need moving video? I think lo-res motion or time-lapse medium res stills should suffice. Remember this is merely to stimulate Recap discussion after every two hours . If we run out of space we could throw away all but salient stills which would need to be chosen on the spot and copied to a common drive… etc. etc. etc.
> >
> > Anyway, the Coordinators can plan this out in consultation with me or Adrian, and we need a team.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Xin Wei
I thought I had ironed out all the issues with the ReacTIVision fiducial CV system last week when I discovered the new update of the software, but I've hit another snag. Maybe someone has an idea to solve or work around this problem. The problem is that the new computers all have Thunderbolt ports rather than native Firewire and ReacTIVision does not recognize the cameras once they are connected with an adapter. I didn't encounter this issue with my earlier testing because my computer is old enough to still have a Firewire port. Interestingly, Max has no problem seeing the Firewire camera when it is connected through the Thunderbolt adapter, so it is not just a power issue or complete incompatibility. The simplest solution I can think of is to purchase new cameras that are compatible with both the computer at a hardware level and with the ReacTIVision software. Tracking down cameras that we have a reasonable guarantee of working shouldn't be too difficult, but I don't know if we want to prioritize this as an investment or not. The key (at least for my camera-projector system) is to have a camera with a variable zoom so that the imaging sensing can be closely matched to the projected image. For an overhead tracking system, the key factors would be a wide angle lens, high resolution (to minimize the required size for the fiducials) and reasonably high speed (for stable image tracking).Another solution to this is to simply used older computers that have firewire ports so that we can use existing cameras. This would certainly be feasible for the camera-projector system. We would have to test this out for the overhead tracking system. The best thing to do of the overhead system is to try out the existing camera arrangement to see how well it works with the fiducials. I can try the out this afternoon (assuming the space is open for testing).In general I think a fiducial based computer vision system is a good way to reliably track individuals and to afford conscious interaction with the system.Best,ByronOn Sun, Nov 9, 2014 at 8:19 PM, Sha Xin Wei <Xinwei.Sha@asu.edu> wrote:After the Monday tests of hardware and networking mapping to lights in iStage with Pete, Omar and I can code the actual logic the rest of the week with Garrett, and maybe with some scheduled consults w Evan and Julian for ideas. Omar’s got code already working in on the body lights. I want to see it working via the overhead lights beaming onto the floor. For this game we need to know who’s who.Byron, Ozzie anyone: What is the easiest way in the iStage for us to track individual identities? Not blob because they’ll confuse.Byron: IF indeed you’ve got the fiducial code working. Can you show this to Omar (and Garrett) so they can work on the Darkener and Lighteners ecology with me? Can we have people carry fiducials visible to the camera from above? Maybe they can place a fiducial next to them in order to draw light. Can the fiducuals be printed in a legible size that is not ludicrously large? How about if we print a bunch of fiducials as “LIGHT COINS” of three different denominations — RGB — each good for a certain amount of elapsed time. Exposing a fiducial to the camera charges it against your account (it can be used only once per session). Maybe waving it can increase the intensity but shorten the time (reciprocal constraint). People can then choose to band together or in the +/- version, subtract etc.
On Nov 10, 2014, at 12:22 AM, "Vangelis Lympouridis" <vl_artcode@yahoo.com> wrote:
Oh well, I did my best. I wish I could be more helpful but you may get something out of that...
Syn-tonic - From the Greek «Τόνος» (Tonos) which is the word for the accent mark you see often in Greek words (‘) so it can refer to the dominant frequency- emphasis. The Greek Τονικότητα (eng. Tonality) refers to the harmonic epicenter of a musical system (gamut). The closest to syntonic is συντονισμός which is close to tuning (sync) (same frequency, same phase). Makes sense as “together in frequency”.
Syn-chronic – From the Greek «Χρόνος» (Chronos) eng. Time. The Greek equivalent is συγχρονισμός (synchronization) meaning at the same exact time; maybe more appropriate for “together in time”.
Syn-tropic - From the Greek «Τρόπος» Tropos. Τροπος is the way something is happening, emerging, evolving. There is no word in Greek that combines these two but there is a term that was introduced in 2006 at the EU called Comodalité that got translated in Greek as συν-τροπικ-ότητα (meaning every way possible). If I am right orientation and direction is the same thing except that direction implies movement. Tropic and tropical refers also to a cyclical direction so in a way it can refer to the same direction.
Iso-tropic – There is a word called ισοτροπία in Greek (eng. Isotropy) (mainly found in Physics and Chemistry) which is the condition where the properties of something are not related to the way that they are measured or that you get the same results regardless the direction or dimension of the study. I think that “together in orientation” could be based in the other big family of Παρα- prefix (Para- parallax), that means at the side of, facing the same direction. Two things can move in parallel or point in parallel ways. ...although I cannot think of something that sounds good. Parallelic sounds really bad...
Syn-tenic – Τείνω(verb) Ταινία , refers to length, trajectory and we also call α movie «ταινία». Great use for “along the same path”.
Syn-Plectic – From the Greek Πλέξη which means knitting, interlacing, braids. Συμπλέκτης (syn and plexis) is the car clutch. Very good for “plaited together”
Syn-gamic – From the Greek verb Γαμέω (eng. gametes) and refers to fertilization (conception). Syngamic might bring giggles as syn and gameo is like a threesome; gametes with companion!
Syn-detic – From the Greek verb Δένω (eng. binding) which exists in many derivatives of things combined. Συν-δετικό though refers to something that joins two or more things together; while two things combined are συν-δεδεμένα. Syndemic sounds closer although the world is already in use in the health context.
Syn-biotic – From the Greek Bios ; things living together. Very nice.
Vangelis Lympouridis, PhD
Visiting Scholar,
School of Cinematic Arts
University of Southern California
Senior Research Consultant,
Creative Media & Behavioral Health Center
University of Southern California
http://cmbhc.usc.edu
Whole Body Interaction Designer
www.inter-axions.com
vangelis@lympouridis.gr
Tel: +1 (415) 706-2638
-----Original Message
Hi All,I will need a little guidance for this Thursday. I think I know how. But, I am open to any suggestions.I will make arrangements to be available next Monday at 5:30pm.I will be hanging the lights as soon as they get in this week. I will try to make myself available as much as I can.Pete
AME Technical Director(480)965-9041(O)
From: Xin Wei Sha
Sent: Sunday, November 09, 2014 8:19 AM
To: Michael Krzyzaniak; Julie Akerly; Jessica Rajko; Varsha Iyengar (Student); Ian Shelanskey (Student); Michael Bateman; Peter Weisman; Garrett Johnson
Cc: synthesis-operations@googlegroups.com; Julian Stein; Assegid Kidane; Sylvia Arce
Subject: Adrian Freed: fuelling imagination for inventing entrainmentsGarrett, Mike K, Julie, Jessica, Varsha, Ian, Bateman, Pete,Can we schedule time to create and try out some entrainment exercises during the LRR Nov 17 -26?How about we make our first working session as a group onMonday Nov 17 5:30 in the iStage.I’ll work with people in smaller groups.Tuesday afternoon Nov 12, I’ll putter around Brickyard,or by appointment in the iStage.Ian, Mike Bateman, Pete: let’s run through the lighting controls as Julian gives them to usLet’s look at Julian’s Jitter interface together.I asked Omar to prep a video to video mapper patch that he, you and I canmodify during the workshop to implement different rhythm-mappings.Pete can map Bateman's percussion midi into the lights (it’s a snap via our Max :)Thursday 11/14, at 3:30 in iStage ?Garrett, Mike K: can you work with Pete (or Ozzie re. video) to map the mic and video inputs in iStage into Julian's rhythm kit:percussion midivideo camera on a tripod,overhead video,1 or more audio microphone on tripod,wireless lapel microphones.Julian has code that maps video into rhythm.Can we try that out Wed 11/12 or Thurs 11/13 in the iStage?Let’s find rich language about rhythm, entrainment, temporality, processuality in movement and sound.relevant to entrainment and co-ordinated rhythm, as the Lighting and Rhythm workshop looms.On Nov 8, 2014, at 11:54 AM, Xin Wei Sha <Xinwei.Sha@asu.edu> wrote:I would like to enrich our imagination before we lock too much into talking about “synchronization”and regular periodic clocks in the Lighting and Rhythm workshop.On Nov 8, 2014, at 9:41 PM, Adrian Freed <Adrian.Freed@asu.edu> wrote:
On Nov 8, 2014, at 10:01 PM, Adrian Freed <Adrian.Freed@asu.edu> wrote:
On Nov 9, 2014, at 7:05 AM, Sha Xin Wei <shaxinwei@gmail.com> wrote:
Then I wonder if rank statistics — ordering vs cardinal metrics — could be a compromise way.
David Tinapple and Loren Olson here have invented a web system for peer-critique called CritViz
that has students rank each other’s projects. It’s an attention orienting thing…
Of course there are all sorts of problems with it — the most serious one being
herding toward mediocrity or at best herding toward spectacle
and it is a bandage invented by the necessity of dealing with high student / teacher ratios in studio classes.
The theoretical question is can we approximate a mereotopology on space of
Whiteheadian or Simondonian processes using rank ordering
which may do away with the requirement for coordinate loci.
Axiom of Choice gives us a well ordering on any set, so that’s a start,
but there is no effective decidable way to compute an ordering for an arbitrary set.
I think that’s a good thing. And it should be drilled into every engineer.
This means that the responsibility for ordering
shifts to ensembles in milieu rather than individual people or computers.
Hmmm, so where does that leave us?
We turn to our anthropologists, historians,
and to the canaries in the cage — artists and poets…
There’s a group of faculty here including Cynthia Selin, who are doing what they call scenario [ design | planning | imagining ]
as a way for people to deal with wicked messy situations like climate change, or developing economies. They seem very prepared for
narrative techniques applied to ensemble events but don’t know anything about theater or performance.
It seems like a situation ripe for exploration. If we can get sat the naive phase of slapping conventional narrative genres from
community theater or gamification or info-visualization onto this.
Very hard to talk about, so I want to build examples here.
Xin Wei