Head Tracking

This guy takes Wii technology and reverses it creating a three dimensional view of what's on the TV screen. The video is close to 5 minutes long, but he explains the process pretty well at the beginning. Check it out if you have time.

Head Tracking Video

erik's urls

http://www.coolhunting.com/archives/2008/04/i_want_you_to_w.php

www.coolhunting.com

www.onefloorup.com

Tod Machover Talk

I just wanted to apprise you of a great opportunity to meet with Tod Machover of the MIT Media Lab. He will be at Hancher doing a residency with the Ying quartet, and he has agreed to give a presentation/discussion for interested intermedia and music students next Friday, March 28 at 2:30. At present this is scheduled to be in ABW 110, but depending upon the body count this may need to change.
Tod is an extremely innovative musician/composer/inventor who has pushed the boundaries of musical performance to include computers, robotics, and the internet. He is well known for developing new musical interfaces (hyperinstruments) such as the sensor chair, the gesture wall, and the Chandelier pictured above. I have included an abbreviated bio below. Please let me know (mneucollins@gmail.com) if you are planning to be there so I know if there will be enough space, and so that I can let you know of any venue change. It should be way interesting.
http://www.media.mit.edu/hyperins/
http://web.media.mit.edu/~tod/

===Tod Machover Bio===

Tod Machover – called "America's Most Wired Composer" by The Los Angeles Times – is widely recognized as one of the most significant and innovative composers of his generation, and is also celebrated for inventing new technology for music, including Hyperinstruments which he launched in 1986.

Tod Machover's music has been noted for breaking traditional artistic and cultural boundaries, offering a unique and innovative synthesis of acoustic and electronic sound, of symphony orchestras and interactive computers, and of operatic arias and rock songs.
In addition, Machover has created numerous large-scale music installations for the general public, including the building-size underground art experience Meteorite (2000-2005) in Essen, Germany, a collaboration with media entrepreneur Andre Heller. He is currently working on two new operas: Death and the Powers, a "robotic" opera with an original libretto by U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky, and Skellig, based on the award-winning novel by David Almond.

Tod Machover has invented many new technologies for music, most notably his Hyperinstruments that use smart computers to augment musical expression and creativity. He has designed these hyperinstruments for some of the world's greatest musicians, from Yo-Yo Ma to Prince, as well as for the general public and for children, as in his Toy Symphony project (www.toysymphony.net) – called "a vast, celebratory ode to the joy of music and its power to bring young and old together, diversity into unity (Boston Globe)" – which has been touring worldwide since 2002. Machover's Hyperinstrument research has long been supported by major companies such as Yamaha, and several of his Music Toys have recently been made commercially available by Fisher-Price and others. In addition, his music composition software Hyperscore – originally developed for children in the context of Toy Symphony – is fast gaining worldwide recognition as a popular creative tool for people of all ages and backgrounds. In awarding Machover the first Kurzweil Prize in Music and Technology in 2003, celebrated inventor and entrepreneur Raymond Kurzweil wrote: "Tod Machover is the only person I am aware of who contributes on a world-class level to both the technology of music creation and to music itself. Even within these two distinct areas, his contributions are remarkably diverse, and of exquisite quality."

Link to Jackie Goss' There There

You may know Jackie Goss' work already. I thought I'd paste some links to some of her Flash projects.

Have a look at "There There", which she often presents as silent "movie". It takes advantage of the scalability of Flash vector graphics:
http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/art/webart/jackie_goss/loader.swf

Her new media page:
http://www.jacquelinegoss.com/projects.html

Chris

dastardly microsoft

So we're learning to do internet coding and learning, if we don't know already, that different browsers sometimes render code in unexpected ways. yesterday i had an experience that made me suspicious that microsoft may be unfairly using this fact. i have an msn email account. sometime ago i began having trouble logging in. on my first log-in attempt, i would be told my password was wrong; invariably, however, i would be logged in on my second attempt. after putting up with this bug for too long, i called msn help yesterday, only to be told that the problem was with firefox. firefox browsers now must be logged in to msn email twice before a connection is made. they told me i should use the latest version of explorer, but the latest version of explorer isn't made for macs. is microsoft creating bugs preventing smooth usage of msn email with macs and with firefox?

Another Code Resource

The W3 Schools website is a place I go to learn how I can use different tags or parts of code. I just wanted to share it with everyone, because it's pretty easy to use, and will help with more than just html and CSS. There are sections for php, flash and SQL as well as many others.
Happy Coding!

conyers not dingell

one of the problems with our current political situation is that our political scene is so scandal-ridden that concerned private citizens cannot master the details of all they would follow. in class yesterday i mispoke: i said that john dingell, a US rep from michigan, was considering starting impeachment proceedings. it wasn't dingell, rather it was john conyers, also a US rep from michigan. here's a link to a story:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/02/11/conyers-said-hes-on-the-edge-of-starting-impeachment/

I was referring to the third paragraph of this story in connecting it to the interactive graphic seen in class displaying interlocking corporate power. Here is that paragraph:

'Conyers expressed fear of what might happen following an impeachment, fear of installing a Bush replacement or losing an election. The “corporate power structure”, he said, would not allow impeachment without unleashing “blowback.” Conyers told Ellen Taylor and Manijeh Saba: “You need to be more than brave and courageous. You need to be smart.”'

the us senate has now voted to give the telecoms immunity for violating the law when they cooperated with illegal federal requests for assistance with illegal surveillance. the senate has been bought & paid for with corporate money. the board members of those corporations are the unelected pullers of the levers of power now. don't bother saluting the flag; salute the bosses.