All Hail Jesus’ Name:

All Things are Thine

Crown Royal

Jesus Loves Me

My Faith Looks Up to Thee

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

Onward Christian Soldier

Prelude and Fugue in G Major – Fugue

Prelude and Fugue in G Majog – Prelude 

Paslm 19

Savior, Like a Shepard Lead Us 

St. Annes Prelude

Trio Sonata No. 1 in E major

Trop Sonata No. 5 in C major

Trio Sonata No. 6 in G Major

or Download the whole thing!

YouTube War is an augmented reality card game that is played in front of a live audience. Before each game, in an offstage bullpen, two players select seven videos that make up their hand. They are each given a special visor and 5 cards (pictured below). Each card is custom-printed with the special marker on the front that can be detected by the webcam mounted on the table. The players take their seats at the ‘Tubing table and and look into their private monitor, where they see their 5 videos playing on their cards. An announcer introduces each player and asks them some questions about their life, a la Jeopardy.

After a countdown, both players put a card into the “ring” – in front of the main camera. In a large projection behind the players, the video plays on Player A’s as if it were attached. Player A then draws another card from the deck, which plays a random YouTube video which they can see in her private monitor. Player B then chooses and throws down one of his cards, which also plays in the large projection, and draws a card from the deck. At that point, there is a 10 second pause as the audience members cast their vote by using lasers to point at a target. Hitting the target makes a meter fill up. The player whose meter fills up first wins the round.

During the game, commentators provide a running commentary on the game much like durring a football or World Series of Poker game. Hopefully we will have time to integrate some cool motion graphics stuff to present stats, biographical info, etc.

We will set up a tournament tree at the beginning of the evening and play through untill we find a winner.

1. The first thing you have to do is get an account at the Apple Developers Connection and buy a membership in the iPhone Developers Program.  The membership is $100 to put your apps on 100 phones.
2. Once you’ve done that, you can download the most recent iPhone SDK.  I have been working with 3.0
3. Install the SDK
4. I have simplified the next few steps by offering a bundle of files that I have collected from different places.  So if you want to skip them, just download my openFrameworks-iPhone package here and unzip it.  Giving credit where credit is due – it includes stuff from memo.tv, the ofxmsaof GoogleCode project, the iphone-glu GoogleCode project, and some compiled libraries from zach-gage’s ofiPhone package that he posted in this thread.  If you want to get all of that yourself, follow the sub-steps below
   1. Crack open a terminal and run the following commands.
      

      mkdir openFrameworks-iPhone
      cd openFrameworks-iPhone
      mkdir apps
      mkdir libs
      mkdir addons
      svn co http://svn.openframeworks.cc/examples/trunk/ apps/examples
      svn co http://svn.openframeworks.cc/openFrameworks/trunk/openFrameworks/ libs/openFrameworks
      svn co http://ofxmsaof.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ addons
      svn co http://ofxiphone.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ addons/ofxiPhone
      mkdir apps/iPhone
      mv addons/ofxiPhone/examples/* apps/iPhone

   2. Download these libs: http://of.msavisuals.com/ofxiPhone/libs/
   3. Unzip them and put them in your ‘libs’ folder
5. Now you should be ready to run an app in the iPhone simulator. Open up one of the example apps (examples/iPhone/iPhone Graphics Example/iPhone Graphics Example.xcodeproj) and try it out.
6. Duplicate one of the iPhone examples and make your app.
7. Okay, not the annoying part starts.  Go to the iPhone Developer Portal Program.  Since apple wants to control everything, this is like your base of operations for creating the stuff that you need to get your app on your phone.  There are 4 things you have to do in here.
   1. Generate a certificate (you’ll have to be signed in to see these links, but they are good instructions, so I’m not going to repeat them)
   2. Register your iPhone
   3. Generate an App ID for your app
   4. Let’s recap.  Your certificate identifies who you are.  You registered your phone so that Apple knows which phone is yours.  Then you made an App ID so Apple knows which app you want to use.  So the last thing you have to do is put all of those things together in something called a Provisioning Profile.  So follow these directions to make one of those.
8. When you are all done with all of this stuff, you should be able to download a file from the Provisioning section called Your_Name.mobileprovision. This is the goal of all of the previous steps. If you have this file, you are ready to move on.
9. Plug in your iPhone with the USB cable.
10. open up XCode and go to Window > Organizer  You should see your iPhone in the list.  I think you need to activate it somehow to use for development, but I can’t quite remember.  It should be obvious.
11. Drag this file onto the “Organizer” window and you should see something like this:
12. Now go back to XCode, expand the “Targets” item in the left menubar, and double click on “iPhone”.  Click on “Properties”, and in the “Identifier” field, put the App ID string that you generated in step 11.3  It should look something like: ABCDEFGHIJ.org.eyebeam.iphone
    
13. In the same screen, click on “Build”, go to the Code Signing section, and under “Code Signing Identity”, select “Any iPhone OS Device” on the left, and “iPhone Developer: Your Name” on the right.
14. You should now be able to build your app.  And when it builds, if your iPhone is connected, it will automatically get transferred to your phone.

Congratulations!  You should now have the app on your phone.

One more tip:  I haven’t tried this out yet, but when I realized that the iPhone simulator didn’t have accelerometer support, I googled around a bit and found this accelerometer-simulator project.  This could be very handy when testing apps that use the accelerometer.  It will save you the trouble of having to transfer your app to your phone every time you want to test the accelerometer.

Crowded is an montage audio program similar to radio shows like This American Life, The Moth, or the productions of Joe Frank.  What makes it unique is that all of the material is is made up of segments of audio requested from and submitted by workers on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk site in return for payment.  I have made one incomplete episode as a test.  You can listen to it here:

Crowded – Episode 0 – (beta)
(I apologize for the audio quality of the first story – you have to listen very closely to hear what he is saying.  I will fix it eventually, but this was fine for this proof of concept)

Each episode has a mechanism or a theme.  For the test episode, I asked workers to listen to a collection of songs.  After listening, they picked one that reminded them of an important event in their life, and then recorded themselves telling that story.  You can see the HIT (Human Intelligence Task – the instructions given to the workers) at the bottom of this page.  The tentative list of future themes are all listed below in the prouction timeline.  Some of them have nothing to do with labor or MT.  Some are very self-conscious.

The workers are given around $5-$10 to follow the directions like the ones below, depending on the complexity of the task. The jobs usually involve recording some audio. Depending on the assignment, they will use either a custom-built recording applet or a commercial conference call service.  When I receive the audio, I (with the help of Graham Reznick, an audio engineer) organize and edit the results into a professionally produced radio show.  Although it would be interesting to keep these results as raw as possible and strive for objectivity, I have decided that I would rather focus on creating an intriguing show.  Except where the theme specifically calls for it, I will not give up editorial privileges.

Why?

After doing several projects using crowdsourcing (Dirt Party, Invisible Threads, You’re So VIP) that essentially use workers as a faceless labor force only slightly better than a computer, I wanted to do a project that was about the actual people who are doing these tasks.  Who are they?  Where do they come from?  Why do they do these jobs?  The dynamics of “buying” a story via Mechanical Turk are interesting to me.  Do I own the story?  What kind of stories do you get from workers  who are ultimately looking at the estimated time vs. payment bottom line?   You could argue that I am still not humanizing them – that I am simply exploiting their willingness to tell personal stories for a few bucks.  But this project isn’t really taking a position in terms of the ethics of online labor markets.  It’s simply the MT system – which most believe is a kind of foreshadowing of a labor paradigm that will inevitably become much more common in the future – in a way that I think is more interesting and rewarding than most of what I have seen.  Most of the workers who respond to my requests are very excited to have been asked to do something that requires a little more creativity and thought.  The trick will be to bring out something unique about the kind of people who do this kind of work.  The average person doesn’t know what crowdsourcing is, and especially doesn’t care to hear strangers talking about uninteresting topics.  So the concept alone won’t make this project successful.  The tentative themes below are intentionally being left somewhat vague so that, when I gain a better understanding of the workers , I will be able to craft a show scenario that will coax better material out of them.

The end result will be a CD of these shows along with a small pamphlet or booklet about the workers who contributed, and any thoughts or research that I accumulate over the course of the show.  Because I don’t want people who wouldn’t normally be on MT to accept the tasks, I will release the entire collection after the project is done.   I will also release the MP3s of the shows and all of the source audio on the web.  With the help of Rhizome, I hope to one day hope to pitch this to WNYC as a series that they can play on air.

Project Budget & Timeline

I would like to make 1 episode per month for 1 year, starting in September of 2010.

Episode Budget

• $100 for stories (roughly 5-10 workers @ $10/job to get enough usable content)
• $200 audio editing
• $50 audio/hosting services (conference call lines, media server, etc.)
• TOTAL: 1 episode costs around $350

Main Budget

• 12 Episodes: $4,200
• Jingle composition: $800
• Printing booklet: $300
• TOTAL: $5500

Timeline

I will complete one episode each month and send it out to a small list of people for comments.  The following are the tentative themes for each month.

1. September Listen to a series of songs, choose one that reminds you of an event in your life, and then tell that story.  The stories will be collected and played on top of the song that you choose. (11 calls @ $8)
2. October Answer the following questions (20 calls @ $4)
   1. describe your immediate environment
   2. how/when did you working on MT?
   3. how do you plan on using the money that you receive for this work?
   4. record 2 minutes of ambient audio from somewhere nearby
3. November Call me and have an argument about a topic I give you.  I will edit myself out, leaving only your side of the argument. (5 calls at $12)
4. December Call this conference line.  You will be joined by 2 other workers.  Your character is [fill in a character].  During the course of this call, you must [plot point 1], [plot point 2], [plot point 3].(I’m not quite sure how I will orchestrate this one yet, so it is very tentative – 6 calls @ $15)
5. January Use the recorder below to record yourself answering the following questions:
   1. Who do you think I (the Requester) am?
   2. Do you ever think about the people who give you the tasks that you do on MT?
6. February Use the recorder below to record yourself reading from your favorite book. (12 calls @ $5)
7. March Use the recorder below to record yourself talking about previous jobs that you have had. (10 calls @ $8)
8. April Use the recorder below to record your first name, your last initial, and where you live.  (This show will focus on quantity rather than quality.  250 calls @ $0.5)
9. May TBD
10. June TBD
11. July TBD
12. August The ubiquitous “best of” show.

Resume or Curriculum Vitae

Please see my CV here.

Work Samples

Invisible Threads

Dirt Party

Praying@Home

You3b

Sample MT HIT

Tell me a story

I am working on a radio show called This Mechanical Life where all of the material comes from Mechanical Turk workers.  And I need your help!  Just follow the 6 steps below.

• Listen to the songs below.
• Think of an event in your life that reminds you of that song.  This could be any story, but it should be important to you, or something that you think other people would enjoy hearing.
• Find a quiet room where you won’t be disturbed
• Tell me your story! Follow the instructions below to record the story. Some tips:
  • Please dont mention the song that you chose while telling your story, or even that the story you are telling was inspired by a song.  Just tick the circle below and the song will play underneath your story.
  • You can use either your computer microphone or a telephone.
  • The story should be between 8 and 15 mins.  Please try to stay on topic and don’t ramble.  That being said, just relax and don’t rush through it.
  • Speak up, speak slowly, and speak clearly.  No bonus will be given if I can’t understand what you are saying.
  • Do not play the song while you are recording.
• Tell me how you recorded it here.
  • if you called the phone number, put the number from which you called here.
  • If you used YouTube, put the URL here
  • If you used HoundBite, put the URL in here
• If you wish to be credited in the final production, please enter your information here.  I cannot guarantee that your story will be used, or that it will not be edited or re-told.  But don’t let this dissuade you!  If you have a problem with any of this, let me know and I will work with it.

The Songs (also available at http://4u.jeffcrouse.info/mt/)

	This text will be replaced	Freescha – Holiday Frost
	This text will be replaced	The Dead Texan – Girth Rides a (Horse)
	This text will be replaced	DNTEL – Last Songs
	This text will be replaced	Julian Fane – Exit New Year
	This text will be replaced	Microstoria – Edu
	This text will be replaced	The Octopus Project – What They Found
	This text will be replaced	Secede – Big Day Out
	This text will be replaced	Am-Boy – Turning Of Season
	This text will be replaced	Neoangin – Trippy Disco
	This text will be replaced	Ratatat – Brule
	This text will be replaced	Ratatat – Bird Priest

Recording Options

• Leave me a message. The maximum length is 3 minutes. You will have to call back a few times.
• Use YouTube QuickCapture.  You don’t have to even be in the frame as long as the audio is clear.  The maximum length is 10 minutes.
• HoundBite is like YouTube for audio.  So if you really don’t want to record a video, this is your solution. The maximum length is 15 minutes.

DATE: February 24, 2009
TIME: 7:00-9:00 pm
VENUE: North 181 – entrance on Evans Way [map],
Massachusetts College of Art + Design
621 Huntington Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts.
Follow the signs posted on the outside of the Tower Building (black glass)
[Green Line "E"]

:: Jeff Crouse ::

Jeff Crouse creates software and installations that highlight the absurdity of technology in culture. Along with Andrew Mahon and Steve Lambert, he recently launched ABSML (commissioned by Turbulence.org). ABSML is a new markup language that enables the creation of complex sentence formulas for 21st century automatic writing. Jeff’s previous work includes YouThreebe, a YouTube triptych creator; Invisible Threads, a virtual jeans factory in Second Life; and James Chimpton, a robotic monkey that interviewed the artists of the 2008 Whitney Biennial. He is currently developing BoozBot, a bar tending robot / puppet; and DeleteCity, a Wordpress plug-in that finds and republishes content that has been taken down from sites such as Flickr and YouTube. His work has been shown at the Sundance Film Festival, the Futuresonic festival in Manchester, UK, the DC FilmFest, and the Come Out and Play Festival in Amsterdam. More >>

::: Mark Skwarek + Joseph Hocking :::

Mark Skwarek and Joseph Hocking will present Children of Arcadia, a real-time virtual ecosystem which undergoes the stress test of apocalypse to expose the moral fibers of its inhabitants and the flaws in their idealized utopia. Virtual reality and augmented reality are used to combine the physical world of downtown Manhattan with a virtual environment called Arcadia. The work gathers real-time information from the Internet related to the American economy and society and translates this data into either a utopia or apocalypse. These changes create a living 17th-century Baroque painting that shifts between a representation of apocalyptic ruin and one of an idealized utopia. More >>

:::: Up Next ::::

Ursula Endlicher – March 17, 2009

PLAN AHEAD: Calendar

::::: About Upgrade! Boston :::::

Upgrade! Boston is curated by Jo-Anne Green for Turbulence.org in partnership with the Studio for Interrelated Media at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. It is one of 32 nodes currently active in Upgrade! International, an emerging network of autonomous nodes united by art, technology, and a commitment to bridging cultural divides. If you would like to present your work or get involved, please email jo at turbulence dot org.

Come Experience The Amazing New Digital Prayer Enhancement Technology!

Inspired by distributed computing projects such as Folding@Home and SETI@Home, Praying@Home is the name given to a suite of technologies developed by The Institute for Faith-Based Technology, or InFaBat™, innovators in the field of technologically-aided spirituality.  The first development is the PrayerRecorder™ – a USB device that plugs into any PC and allows the user to capture her unique Prayer Signature®, an ultra-frequentic resonance that is “broadcasted” by the human body while praying.  The user simply attaches the InFaBat Senso-Cap to her temples and forehead, presses a small InFaBat Prayer Paddle™ between her hands, and prays on a particular subject.  Meanwhile, the PrayerRecorder captures and records the PrayerSignature to the users’ hard drive.  Then, using the InFaBat PrayerBroadcaster™, we can broadcast her Prayer Signature, somewhat like an FM radio station that only God can hear!  Unlike humans, who need to take breaks from praying to fulfill biological needs, computers need no breaks, resulting in 24/7 prayer output.  Additionally, the PrayerBroadcaster unit is equipped with a SPU (Standard Prayer Unit) Amplifier, which increases the strength of your prayers by up to 54%.  These technologies truly represent a revolutionary breakthrough in the field of Digital Prayer Technology.

Our display at the Expo consists of a small, tastefully decorated booth – 8 feet wide, 6 feet deep, and 8 feet tall, containing a solid white prayer bench facing a white computer screen on a white altar and hundreds of pure white candles: a mix between a confessional and a blood-giving station. An attendant in a white lab coat and a priest’s shirt and collar stands by to help users. Choral music plays from speakers positioned in the far corners of the booth.  Adorning the proscenium of the booth is a large glowing sign that displays the number of Standard Prayer Units (SPUs) that we have collected over the course of the Expo. Our goal for the Eyebeam Mixer Expo is to collect 375,000 SPUs, focused on a variety of urgent problems faced by the world today. Above the SPU meter is a glowing sign with the words “Institute for Faith-Based Technology: Come Experience The Amazing New Digital Prayer Enhancement Technology”.  Atop the booth sits an InFaBat PrayerBroadcaster, which looks a lot like a large set of rabbit ears.  Inside, the both is adorned with religious symbols and imagery.  On the prayer bench is the InFaBat PrayerRecorder with the InFaBat  PrayerPaddle and InFaBat Sens-o-cap.

Visitors are invited to come into the booth and kneel down on our prayer bench facing the computer screen.  A soothing voice leads the user through the initial setup process, explaining how to put on the InFaBat Senso-Cap and position the InFaBat PrayerPaddle properly.  The voice will explain that in order to get a perfectly pure PrayerSignature, un-Christian thoughts must be kept at bay because they can disturb the prayer recording process. The voice will suggest that the user get all un-Christian thourhgs out of their system before starting the recording process.  The voice will then go through a brief explanation of how the technology works, and instruct the user to start praying. Meanwhile, the InFaBat PrayerRecorder senses and records the peaks and valleys of the users Prayer Signature as they whiz by on the screen on the altar.  If, at any time during the process, an un-Christian thought is sensed, an alarm sounds and red lights flash, and the user must start over.  On average, this happens to 1 out of every 3 users.

Once recorded, the Prayer Signature and a 2-frame animated snapshot of the user are uploaded to our InFaBat Worldwide Prayer Visualizer. The visualizer is displayed in the form of a large projection above the prayer booth. Participants who have contributed their Prayer Signature are represented inside the visualization by a bubble-like avatar featuring their animated snapshot and prayer signature. The avatars float in a sparkling stew of ephemeral prayer-related iconography. As their prayer is digitally replicated in the InFaBat Mainframe, participants will be treated to dazzling animations of the SPU’s emanating from their avatars and then projected into the heavens.

When the user is done, they are given a readout of their Signature, a sticker to tell the world that they contributed their Prayer Signature to a good cause, and a pamphlet will be available that describes the technology behind the system and give users information about how they can purchase the Praying@Home PE system and optimize their prayer output by using unused computing cycles on their home PC.

Team

Jeff Crouse (set decoration, audio production, programming, pamphlet design) creates software and installations that highlight the absurdity of technology in culture.  Jeff’s previous work includes YouThreebe, a YouTube triptych creator; Invisible Threads, a virtual jeans factory in Second Life; and James Chimpton, a robotic monkey that interviewed the artists of the 2008 Whitney Biennial. He is currently developing BoozBot, a bar tending robot/puppet; and DeleteCity, a Wordpress plug-in that finds and republishes content that has been taken down from sites such as Flickr and YouTube. His work has been shown at the Sundance Film Festival, the Futuresonic festival in Manchester, UK, the DC FilmFest, and the Come Out and Play Festival in Amsterdam.

Aaron Meyers (software design/programming) is a designer and programmer using generative strategies in the creation of software and moving image. Since earning his MFA at the USC Interactive Media Division in 2007, Meyers worked in the now-defunct Yahoo Design Innovation Team, taught classes at UCLA Design|Media Arts and continues to work on a variety of interactive projects for diverse clients that have included Digg, Radiohead, and Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

Why?

Praying@Home is a parody of Christianity’s attempt to validate itself in the scientific academy, as seen in “scientific” studies about the effectiveness of prayer, creationism, intelligent design, and faith healing.  Our fictitious group – The Institute for Faith-Based Technology – claims to be interested in finding a link between technology and faith, seeming not to notice that their attempts undermine the very idea of faith – namely that it doesn’t care about evidence.  They believe that praying is a purely mechanical task and should be dealt with like any other task that is such a waste of human effort – by mechanizing it.  In so doing, not only do we save time, but we take advantage of the added efficiency, tirelessness, and networkability of computers to multiply the worlds prayer output infinitely, thus solving all of the worlds problems and creating a utopia on Earth.

The Institute will invite visitors to try out their PrayerRecorder and PrayerBroadcaster technology at the Expo in an attempt to get them to buy the home version.  As a marketing scheme, the Institute has announced that they will try to collect 375,000 “Beckells“, or “Standard Prayer Units” (discovered by Fredrick Beckell in the 1970s) during the Expo.  Each user who volunteers to kneel down in the booth and use the PrayerRecorder contributes a varying number of Beckells depending on the purity of their thought and the strength of their unique Prayer Signature.

The Institute also displays a not-so-subtle favoritism towards Christianity, simply assuming that the Christian God is the “correct” god to pray to, while also imposing their on values on the users by warning them against thinking any un-Christian thoughts while operating the PrayerRecorder.  This very dystopic attitude betrays the fact that the illusion of utopia often hides a darker truth.

In society today, criticizing a persons religion is often seen as un-PC at least, and completely taboo at worst.  Religion is given special privileges in most areas of public life, from politics to casual conversation, where other beliefs, like non-religious pacifism, are not protected by the law.  People treat religion as if it is something immutable, like race or sex, rather than as a choice that a person makes for themselves.  Through this parody, we hope to open a debate that is often enthusiastically avoided by forcefully insisting that religion should be open to criticism just like any other belief.

The trip went very well overall, and I hope to do it again soon.  The wonderful Christina Kral is currently working on a video about the trip, and here is a small preview.  Stay tuned for the full version.

draft from christina kral on Vimeo.

Video triptychs involve three simultaneous video loops projected side by side on the gallery wall.  While formally simple, the effect of the looping sequences, overlapping sounds and awkward  juxtapositions is uncanny and unsettling. This is due to the slippery dis-harmonization of clip lengths,  and the conceptual layering of the elements within the videos.

For this 2nd youtube video show at Postmasters Gallery, the curators Thomas Hutchison, Maria Joao, Salema and James Andrews have selected dozens of examples of original U3B triptychs created by members of Artists Meeting.

I’d love to see you there!

I spent the weekend in the editing room making some new videos for an application.  See them after the cut.