Installation made with Hush Studios and Flightphase for the University of Dayton admissions office. When I enter the building, it is in “idle mode”, where there is some animated typography of some questions. When I enter the interaction area, a 87×26 field of cubes starts moving, rotating, and scaling in waves, and some cubes directly in front of me congeal into a surface and a video of student life starts playing. At one point, you can see the Kinect cameras installed in the ceiling.

Materials
1 32′x12′ wall
3 Panasonic PT-D6000ULS projectors
4 kinect cameras
2 mac minis (2 kinects each)
TSPS “people tracking” software (modified to use 2 kinects)
1 Mac Pro tower
custom openFrameworks software

into this:

Now you can!

Laser-cut mirrored acrylic with peel-off adhesive on the back. Available for free!

How to make your own (very rough)

1. Download the pattern in Illustrator or EPS format
2. Take a 8 inch piece of standard 1inch wide double-stick puffy tape and put it on the back of a piece of mirrored acrylic.
3. Put the entire thing in the laser cutter with the tape facing up
4. Set the laser cutter to raster. On a 60 watt laser, set power=65, speed=6.0, PPI=1000
5. Cut away!

haarspider is a speed project I did today.  It spiders through webpages and finds faces in images and creates an average face. You can get the source code at Github.  It uses haar cascades to find the faces, so it could actually find anything you have a haar cascade for.  Here are the ones that come with OpenCV:

1. eyeglasses
2. eye
3. frontalface  (this is the one I am using in the samples)
4. lefteye
5. righteye
6. fullbody
7. lowerbody
8. upperbody
9. eyepair_big
10. eyepair_small
11. mouth
12. nose
13. profileface

I’m not totally sure how haar cascades are generated, but I think it’s pretty much the reverse of this.


EXAMPLE USAGE
---------------
haarspider --url http://www.cnn.com --levels 2 --max 1000 --profile cascades/haarcascade_frontalface_default.xml --out cnnfaces.jpg

This will:
1. find all images on cnn.com and find faces in them
2. find all of the links on cnn.com and find all of the faces on those pages.
3. Go back to 1 (depending on how many levels you specify)

Press 'o' at any time to output an image.

I created a little CV web app for the musician/”mad beat scientist” FlyingLotus back in November, and it launched today.

I’d like to give super big props to Eugene Zatepyakin, aka in-spirit.  Eugene used the Alchemy Project to compile a SURF algorithm into ActionScript, and the Apparat framework to optimize it, resulting in a totally real-time matching algorithm in ActionScript, ASSURF.  Without his work, this definitely wouldn’t have been possible.

If you have any of the album art, click here to try it out.

Like a lot of people, I have a little stash of project ideas in the back of my brain that just sit around, taking up room, not being gracious enough to die, and not urgent enough to make themselves into reality. So some time in January, I will take 10 days off to bulldoze my way through as many of these ideas as possible.

These are small, sometimes stupid projects, but there is something to be said for pushing out a bunch of projects quickly.  It’s a chance to tackle the “release early” part of RERO, scratch 10 itches at the same time, and make room for new projects.

I am going to aim for differing levels of “completeness” depending on the project, but I think the constraint of 1 project, 1 day will instill in my some kind of superpower that will allow me to make the most of the allotted time.

Vote!

10 is a nice round number, but I have more than 10 ideas!  What to do?  I could leave it up to you.  Please read the descriptions below and vote for the 5 you like the most. And let me know if you’d like to help with any of the projects!

See the projects and vote after the break!

Fishle.gs

You know those Christ fish you see on the back of peoples’ cars? Did you ever wish you had little acrylic, adhesive-backed legs that you could stick on them. I will make them for you!  That’ll teach ‘em.  I call it Guerilla Atheism (or at least guerilla anti-creationism).  I bought the domain www.fishle.gs!
Current Level of Completeness: none
Desired Level of Completeness: Website with instructions for making legs, and a few of them for sale
Technologies: Laser cutter, PHP/HTML
Difficulty: 5/10

Magnum Map

Once upon a time there was an iPhone app called I Am Rich. It cost $1000 and did absolutely nothing except impress anyone who saw that you had it on your phone. This purpose of this app is also to impress people, but not with the size of your wallet. This iPhone app would tell you the closest store that sells Magnum brand condoms.  Somewhat based on both the Seinfeld episode and the It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode. In collaboration with Cassandra Gero.
Current Level of Completeness: none
Desired Level of Completeness: Beta app
Technologies: Objective C
Difficulty: 8/10

CraigsRoulette

According to Nerve.com, the Craigslist Casual Encounters section is “an online bulletin board where armies of people yearn to hook up in a wide spectrum of ways”, not to mention the home of “sexual pioneers.”  Combining the random social connection of ChatRoulette and the thrill/risk of Text Roulette, CriaigsRoulette is an iPhone program that invites users to “spin the barrel”, which causes the app to cycle through images of posters on Craigslist CE. When it eventually lands on one image, it automatically dials the phone number (or perhaps sends a text message) to the lucky Craigslist user. In collaboration with Cassandra Gero.
Current Level of Completeness: none
Desired Level of Completeness: Beta app
Technologies: Objective C
Difficulty: 8/10

The Typwriteizer

Inspired by Steve Lambert’s Self Control app, The Typwriteizer (sp?) is a simple program that, when launched, will immediately restart your computer in a mode where you can only open your selected text editing application.  Great for anyone who absolutely has to get some writing done!  Great for people for whom SelfControl doesn’t go far enough, like gamers.  Granted, this application might soon be made irrelevant by cloud computing and more apps becoming web-based, but I still think it’s a cool idea!  TypwriteizerOS would be even cooler…
Current Level of Completeness: none
Desired Level of Completeness: Beta app
Technologies: Don’t even know yet
Difficulty: 9/10

Deal With It 2.0

Last week I made a little speed project called DealWithIt.app. I told my friend Aaron about it, and he got really excited.  I was a bit confused because it was extremely simple and stupid, but I thought maybe he just really liked the Deal With It meme.  Later, we were talking about it, and apparently he thought that I had made an app that was constantly searching for faces on your screen and, when it found one, it triggered the sunglasses.  And honestly, I wanted to do that — I just didn’t want to spend a ton of time on something so stupid.  But Aaron has shamed me into wanting to do it.
Current Level of Completeness: 1.0 version
Desired Level of Completeness: 2.0 version with features mentioned above
Technologies: OpenCV (Haar classifiers), OpenGL (read screen buffer)
Difficulty: 4/10

Airhorn Bike Handle Attachment

It’s not really bike season any more, but when it was, my ride home was constantly stained by Bike Rage when stupid pedestrians would wander mindlessly into the bike lane and I would have to scream out in a passive-aggressive way, “Uh, EXCUSE ME!”  The alternative is to get a dinky little bike bell, and honestly, no one takes bike bells seriously, especially in the hectic mess of SoHo Broadway on a Saturday afternoon.  You need something that people have no choice but to acknowledge, and hopefully get a little scared in the process.  An airhorn!
Current Level of Completeness: none
Desired Level of Completeness: published assembly instructions and working demo
Technologies: A trip to Home Depot, possibly laser cutter
Difficulty: 5/10

Spiderman Sticker Dispenser

When people park their cars on the side of the street that is being cleaned, they are rewarded with a big neon sticker on their car window shaming them for standing in the way of sanitation.  I’d like to do the same for cars that park in bike lanes.  But more importantly, there needs to be a way for bikers to administer this punishment without slowing down.  This is where the Spideman Sticker Dispenser comes in.  This is a device that you wear on your wrist that allows you to quickly and easily slap a sticker on a car.
Current Level of Completeness: none
Desired Level of Completeness: published assembly instructions and working demo
Technologies: A trip to Home Depot, possibly laser cutter
Difficulty: 8/10

He, She, or They?

Has this ever happened to you?
Hipster 1: “Hey man, did you get that new Joe Dirt and the Purple Nurples album?”
Hipster 2: “OMG No! But I want to because I love them!”
Hipster 1: “Uh, them? Get your pronouns straight, you douchebag. Joe Dirt and the Purple Nurples is just one girl.”
Well then this is the app for you!  Simply type in the name of the musical act in question, and it will give you an unambiguous answer to that crucial question.
You probably shouldn’t vote for this one.  Too stupid.
Current Level of Completeness: none
Desired Level of Completeness: beta app
Technologies: Objective C
Difficulty: 3/10

3fram.es iPhone app

3fram.es is a newish project by Aaron Meyers, and for a while now we’ve been wanting to make an iPhone version.  It should be very easy with the work I’ve done on the Unlogo uploader, so it’s just a matter of churning it out.
Current Level of Completeness: none
Desired Level of Completeness: beta app
Technologies: Objective C
Difficulty: 7/10

Moustachizer

If you are like me, you lay awake at night wondering what your favorite movie would look like if all of the characters had moustaches.  Well I went ahead and started making an app that can answer that question for you.  This one is kind of cheating because I definitely have to make this.  It was a prize in the Unlogo Kickstarter campaign.  But whatevs I can put it in here if I want!
Current Level of Completeness: some
Desired Level of Completeness: working FFMPEG filter
Technologies: Objective C
Difficulty: 5/10

Pandastream WordPress Plugins

This one isn’t as immediately attention-catching, but there ar a bunch of times that I could have really used it.
Current Level of Completeness: some
Desired Level of Completeness: beta version of plugin
Technologies: PHP
Difficulty: 6/10

Deal With It
Deal With It (Universal)
Source Code

Thanks to Akira_At_Asia who made the ofxTransparent addon!

Unlogo is a web service that eliminates logos and other corporate signage from videos. On a practical level, it takes back your personal media from the corporations and advertisers. On a technical level, it is a really cool combination of some brand new OpenCV and FFMPEG functionality. On a poetic level, it is a tool for focusing on what is important in the record of your life rather than the ubiquitous messages that advertisers want you to focus on.

In short, Unlogo gives people the opportunity to opt out of having corporate messages permanently imprinted into the photographic record of their lives.

From the Berkeley Net Art exhibition:

Corporate branding coupled with new media transforms our already cluttered visual environment into a pulsing tesseract of capital. Commercial television and video digitally blur some logos while promoting others. Music videos were introduced as short films and commercials for albums, but today’s music videos are commercials within commercials (Lady Gaga’s music video Telephone features nine product placements.) However, new media also offer new forms of resistance and play.

Enter Unlogo, a new artwork by Jeff Crouse that uses corporate technologies to new ends. Unlogo is an iPhone app and website. The app can be used by individuals to identify logos that may occur in photographs they take with their phone and to replace them with images drawn from an online databank. The website allows anyone to view and contribute to the databank, suggesting and uploading images that may be substituted for a particular logo.

Unlogo follows the history of tactical media art projects and adds its own contemporary twists. It allows individuals to moderate not only the temporary act of viewing a magazine, billboard, or screen without corporate messages, but gives people the opportunity to opt out of having these messages permanently imprinted into the photographic record of their lives. In allowing viewers to identify what constitutes a logo and its alternate, Unlogo asks us to consider our own role in media culture. What image will you suggest as a logo-alternate? Your Facebook pic? Your garage-band skateboard sticker?

3 minute audio interview

Technical Overview

Unlogo consists of 3 parts

1. The FFMPEG/OpenCV filter. This filter accesses the Unlogo database and tries to block logos in each frame of the video.
2. The Pandastream/CakePHP web service. We want to make it as easy as possible for people to use the filter, so we started a web service that allows people to just upload their video, and then they get a notification when it is done being filtered. This also allows us to expand out collection of logos “in the wild.”
3. The iPhone uploader. This is still in progress.

Curated by Becky Koblick for Light and Wire Gallery
JULY 24 – SEPTEMBER 4, 2010In this project Ciocci and Crouse have redesigned Light and Wire Gallery’s characteristic website so that every time you visit a new page, a different layout or WordPress Theme is loaded behind the gallery’s usual content. Crouse’s code randomly loads 1 of 20 different Themes, while Ciocci has visually modified each one. Fundamentally, the WordPress theme system is a way to “skin” one’s website. Not only does this determine the look of the site but the WordPress themes can provide control over the presentation of the material on a website. As one clicks through each theme, this generic design platform that largely informs the aesthetics of the web is revealed for its amateur quality.

— DESCRIPTION FROM LIGHT & WIRE’S SITE

Here is a quick little project I did for Dave, who now goes by Fever Creative.

I wasn’t able to go to Miami, where it was used, but Jacob Milam took some videos and pictures.  A video of a runway show floats around the screen, following the users face, while the liquid simulation (thanks Memo! www.memo.tv/ofxmsafluid) in the background reacts to the users silhouette.

I’m now trying to figure out what I should release that would actually be useful for people.  I ended up making a kind of comprehensive ComputerVision class that does

1. smile detection
2. Face detection (using ofxCvHaarTracker)
3. optical flow (using ofxCvOpticalFlowPyrLK)
4. FERN detection
5. blob detection w/background subtraction

It’s all pretty well optimized, and easily configurable.  Of course, it can’t do all of these things at once — too much CV!  Eh – nothing special, but if you want it, it’s yours!

[flickr-gallery mode="photoset" photoset="72157624034029282"]

The hall of a nightclub turned into an interactive canvas for live animations drawn by the passing and moving bodies.

Commissioned by White nightclub, Beirut

in collaboration with Aaron Meyers and Ayah Bdeir
June 2010

Frameless LCDs, IR cameras, IR floods, Custom Software, Algorithmic Animations

A prototype of a pair of covert stereoscopic video recording glasses I developed with Reggie

Reggie Watts

Reggie Watts does London

F_CK SH_T STACK

Reggie on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon

Jeff Crouse

The World Series of ‘Tubing is a conceptual augmented reality game played in front of a live audience, combining the intensity of a high-stakes poker tournament with the world of sensational online video.

Invisible Threads is a mixed reality performance installation that explores the growing intersection between labor, emerging virtual economies and real life commodities through the creation of a designer jeans sweatshop in the metaverse Second Life.

Inside the Artist’s Studio is a radio program hosted by a robotic Chimpanzee named James Chimpton. Chimpton’s brain is powered by a markup language I created called ABSML, or A BullShit Markup Language. The result is rather absurd – a clothed robotic monkey, interviewing artists in the Biennial about their work, in a robotic english accent.

Spring 2010: http://prof.crouse.cc/web_as_platform/spring_2010

Google’s announcement of the Chrome OS provided a definite time line for what has been on the horizon for some time: web-based personal computing. With this radical change in the way we think about personal computing, languages once thought of as too rudimentary for “serious” application programming (namely JavaScript) are becoming more important. This class will look at the nuts and bolts of Web Application Development, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP, as well as the implications of viewing the web as a platform. We will look at the current landscape of web apps and services, including Mechanical Turk, Amazon S3, Facebook, and Google Maps, and learn to use these services in our own work. We will cover many popular libraries, such as JQuery, Blueprint CSS, and the Google Web Toolkit and App Engine. This class is for students who wish to learn the basics of how to make functional web applications. The class will start with a 2 week HTML/CSS intensive review, so students with no HTML/CSS experience should expect some extra work.

Spring 2010 site: http://prof.crouse.cc/code_for_art/spring_2010

Code for Art is an introduction to C and C++ programming using the Macintosh, UNIX or DOS operating system. Students will learn how to compile basic executable files and be given a strong grounding in applications development. The class will also cover basic IDE and development environment issues as well as platform specific development concerns.

This class isn’t called Programming 101 because rather than linked lists and assembly language, we are interested in image, audio, and video manipulation. Rather than utility, we are interested in experience. This is how your work will be evaluated.

The class has 3 parts.

Part 1

Intensive tutorial in c++. For some of you this might be boring, but it is necessary so that we are all in the same page. At the end of that, there will be an open book, in-class code writing test.

Part 2

The second part is all about brainstorming and generating rapid prototypes. Each week there will be a presentation about a different coding topic, such as working with images, video, audio, computer vision, etc. There will be a critique at the end of this part where you will present your ideas (published in the prescribed way, video+ source code) and proofs-of-concepts and the class will help you decide which project to pursue in the next section of the class.

For this part, you will need Programming Interactivity: A Designer’s Guide to Processing, Arduino, and Openframeworks.

Part 3

The last part is about presentation, performance, documentation, and sharing. You will take one of your rapid prototypes and polish it.

Laborers of Love is a project focused on the relationship between online sex and online work, specifically how technology mediates desire and sexuality. We are interested in how online culture has transformed what we mean by labor, sex, gender, sexual preference and collaboration, as well as how we think of pornography in terms of production and consumption.

The project uses Mechanical Turk (mturk.com) to create your sexual fantasy. Mturk is an internet application that hires anonymous online workers to complete a set of tasks that are a few steps beyond automation – still requiring human intelligence. Workers get paid a small amount of money per task. Businesses list jobs and online workers get paid to fulfill the tasks requested.

For this first version of the project we want to find out how this global pool of anonymous workers interpret your sexual fantasy through image and video. You will be directed through a series of questions about your sexual preferences. It takes less than a minute. Your input will guide the workers as to what images and videos they should choose to represent your fantasy.

Once your input is submitted, it will be sent to MTurk. Through a division of labor, anonymous workers will interpret each one of your responses and search the internet for the image or video they feel best matches your response. When the job is complete your fantasy will be revealed. So why waste another minute – get started now!

It is used in a game called Slideshow Improv, where contestants must present the often-nonsensical but always hilarious generated slides as if they were part of a coherent presentation.

One of the manifestations of this research group for me personally is a class. Here is a rough draft of the course description.

Course Description

The premise of this class is that, like television, film, audio, and other traditional media, software can be a very effective medium for humor, which, in turn, can be a powerful tool for activism, editorial, and hilarious jokes. Beyond simply rendering our CG, hosting our Flash animations, or providing a target for nerd jokes, the computer can be exploited for its strengths (interactivity, procedurality, logic, networkability) to achieve the funny.

We will explore what makes good humor in traditional media by looking at several comedy styles such as absurdism, prop humor, sketch comedy, improv, and black comedy, with special attention to parody and satire.  We will also look at some software artists who have already struck software comedy gold, including Cory Archangel, Max Goldberg (“YTMND”), Ze Frank, and Evan Roth. We will apply the ideas of game theorists and other prominent software gurus such as Ian Bogost, Chris Crawford, and Tim Berners-Lee to the styles of comedians such as Tim and Eric, Andy Kaufman, Yakov Smirnov, Douglas Adams, Stephen Colbert, Mr. Show, the Wondershowzen team, and Eric Fensler to produce funny software.  The final independent projects will be shown at a New York comedy club.  All of the example code will be provided in openFrameworks, but you may also work in Processing or Flash.

Prerequisite: you must be experienced with either oF, Processing/Java, or ActionScript.

Learning objectives:

1. To attempt to define humor in the context of software
2. To answer the question: Are there such things as funny algorithms?
3. To explore tropes and mechanisms frequently used in software – not just games, but software art and plain old software – that can be used to achieve a humorous  effect
4. To invent the field of software comedy in the same way that there are comedy writers, actors, and even singers

Art Fag City critic and series participant Paddy Johnson calls it, “The most challenging IRL Internet competition of the decade.”

“Blurring distinctions between performer, audience, and participant, this work exposes and makes fun of network culture.”
- Brian McCormick on “World Series of ‘Tubing”

The World Series of ‘Tubing is a conceptual augmented reality game played in front of a live audience, combining the intensity of a high-stakes poker tournament with the world of sensational online video. The competition consists of two players trying to out-do each other by presenting a series of YouTube videos (rendered as an augmented reality layer on top of a real card) to an audience in a series of fast-paced rounds. The competitors can manipulate the playback of the video in a number of ways by tilting or gesturing with their card. The crowd decides which video/card wins by shooting a target on stage with a laser, and the process repeats until a player wins three rounds. During the game, commentators provide a running commentary on the game much like during a football or World Series of Poker game.

The World Series of ‘Tubing brings televised competitive sport and game show aesthetics into the realm of participatory theater, complete with live commentators and stellar motion graphics. The everyday action of “favoriting” online media is expanded into a participatory game show. By blurring the distinctions between performer, audience, and participant, it work builds upon the inherent qualities of shared culture as it exists online.

[flickr-gallery mode="photoset" photoset="72157619922589590"]
[flickr-gallery mode="photoset" photoset="72157622956742348"]
[flickr-gallery mode="photoset" photoset="72157622857521080"]

The Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is … a crowdsourcing marketplace that enables computer programs to co-ordinate the use of human intelligence to perform tasks which computers are unable to do. Requesters, the human beings that write these programs, are able to pose tasks known as HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks), such as choosing the best among several photographs of a storefront, writing product descriptions, or identifying performers on music CDs. Workers … can then browse among existing tasks and complete them for a monetary payment set by the Requester.via wikipedia

Crowded is an as-yet unreleased radio show/podcast that is made up of segments of audio recorded by Mechanical Turk workers.  Each episode has a mechanism, such as:

1. Workers listen to a series of songs, choose one that reminds them of an event in their life, and then tell that story.  The stories are then combined and played on top of the song that they chose.
2. Workers are encouraged to call me and have an argument about a topic I give them.  I edit myself out, leaving only one side of the argument.
3. Workers are asked to call and tell a story/reminisce about something that never actually happened to them.
4. Workers are provided with a conference call line and a character to play.  Two or more workers call in and have to play their character.

The workers call in and are given, on average, $5-$8 to send an audio recording that fits the mechanism.  They are given the option of calling a US phone number and leaving a message, or recording themselves on HoundBite or YouTube.

After doing several projects using crowdsourcing, I wanted to do a project that was about the faceless people who are doing these tasks.  Who are they?  Where do they come from?  Why do they do these jobs?

You could argue that I am still just using them and not really humanizing them so much as exploiting their willingness to tell personal stories for a few bucks.  But you can argue a lot of things.

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.

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.

[flickr-gallery mode="photoset" photoset="72157614873397851"]

When installed properly, GodBlock will test each page that your child visits before it is loaded, looking for passages from holy texts, names of religious figures, and other signs of religious propaganda. If none are found, then your child is allowed to browse freely.  But if religious content is found, your child receives a page that states simply:

Blocked for religious content.

“Please refrain from devoting your life to imaginary supernatural beings until you are at least 18 years old.”

No filter is perfect, and false positives are an unfortunate reality.  But isn’t it better to be safe than sorry?  Make the world a better place.  Protect your impressionable kids and students from harmful ideas so that they don’t grow up to spread hate, fear, and shame.  Allow them to hold onto their natural reason, compassion, and acceptance without being polluted or destroyed by some self-serving or delusional fanatic.

Install GodBlock today!

[flickr-gallery mode="photoset" photoset="72157619209424092"]

For the past year, we have been developing the Ecosystem Engine in openFrameworks, although I am once again looking at Ogre3D and a few other engines as a good foundation for Ecosystem.

Another team of volunteers (again, recruited from the communities mentioned above) would write documentation about the process of creating animations for the Ecosystem Engine and creating a website where it will be available for download for all major platforms.  Our hope is that we can eventually attract animators to use Ecosystem and showcase other artists’ projects on the site.

In 2007, I was a finalist for a Rhizome grant for the project. Check out the proposal here.

Tune in as the most talented fingers from all over the world come together to compete in events ranging from sprinting to javelin to pole-vaulting, and ultimately celebrate what it means to be a finger, and a citizen of Earth.

The Finger Olympics started out as an idea tossed around at Eyebeam between Friedrich Kirschner and Zach Lieberman, and eventually turned into a playable computer vision project.

For more information, go to fingerolympics.com

ABSML is a markup language that is used in a variety of projects incluing Inside the Artists Studio, Befriend a Recruiter and MadLibs Karaoke, and the winner of a 2008 Turbulence grant.

Here is an example of what some ABSML code looks like:

<sentence id="q-art-14" >Have you considered <pickone>creating, making</pickone> <pickone>more, less</pickone> <library>modifier</library> <library plural="true"><get>medium</get>_outcome</library>?</sentence>

<sentence id="q-art-15">You had an exhibition at <organization><source><get>website</get></source></organization>. Some say this was a turning point in your career. <pickone>Do you agree?, but I have my doubts, I'm curious what you think.</pickone></sentence>

<sentence id="q-art-16">Do you ever <pickone>wonder if this is all, wonder if this could be considered </pickone> all just a big shaam?  and - why do you think so?</sentence>

<sentence id="q-art-17">Tell <pickone>me, our listeners</pickone> about your exhibition last year at <organization><source><get>website</get></source></organization>.</sentence>

<sentence id="q-art-17"><pickone>I will let Alfred know., Alfred sometimes makes mistakes., I will speak to Alfred about this.</pickone></sentence>

<sentence id="q-art-18"><pickone>My youngest son - Alfred, Alfred- my youngest son</pickone> <pickone>is a fan of, enjoys </pickone> <pickone>your earlier work, early work, the work from the beginning of your career </pickone> in <city><source><get>website</get></source></city> <pickone>personally I am not a fan - however, but he is young and has childish tastes </pickone> - <pickone>for the benefit of our listeners, for the radio audience</pickone> <pickone>please tell us, do tell us</pickone> <pickone>about, of </pickone> your early career.</sentence>

<sentence id="q-art-19"><pickone>Tell me more about, Let us discuss, Let us return to </pickone> your relationship to <city><source><get>website</get></source></city>, <pickone>which, which I must say </pickone> <pickone>is one of my favorite cities, holds a special place in my heart, is near and dear to me.</pickone>.  How do you feel about it?</sentence>

<sentence id="q-art-20">What about your <pickone>most recent, latest</pickone> <library plural="false"><get>medium</get>_outcome</library>?</sentence>

<sentence id="q-art-21" >But is that really art?<pickone> or something else entirely?, or a <library>modifier</library> fantasy?</pickone></sentence>

<sentence id="q-art-22" >Tell me about your teaching practice at <organization with="University, College, Academy, Institute, school"><source striptags="true"><get>wesbite</get></source></organization>.</sentence>

See the roadshow site for more information.

Delete City uses the ridiculous storage allotment of web hosting services like Dreamhost to cache large amounts of user generated content from sites like YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, etc. and then monitors to see if any of this content is subsequently taken down. When it finds removed content, it automatically posts the content to your WordPress blog. The nature of the content can be customized by the user by site, keyword, and other criteria. Devious? Maybe. But also one step in the fight against censorship.

The DeleteCity plugin is now available for download at WordPress.org. You can view a sample blog at DeleteCity.com/blog

I ended helping Andrew Mahon with his project, “Digitally Fit”.  You can read more about it on Andrew’s site.

While I was a production fellow at Eyebeam, we worked with the artist and geographer, Trevor Paglen, on an exhibit called “The Other Night Sky.” I took part in the initial planning and worked on some of the data parsing.

Download the exhibition brochure (PDF).