Back in November of last year, Dave and I did an installation at the Eyebeam Mixer called “Anywhere But Here.” The Eyebeam press release described it as “a playful examination of the use of party photography as social currency. Participants use an assortment of props, costumes, and computer-aided special effects to fake being at an imaginary location.” Rhizome also had some nice coverage of the event.
Our original idea grew out of a somewhat drunken conversation Dave and I were having about the site Last Night’s Party while walking home from Monkeytown one night. We both thought it was funny how people would go to parties just to get their picture taken, and how this artifact had become more important than the actual experience of the party. We thought it would be funny if there was a party in a huge, ugly, open space (like Eyebeam), with a bunch of movie sets where people could fake being at a really awesome party. And that would be the point of the party — to fake being at a better party. And thus, Anywhere But Here was born.
What we ended up with was a projector mounted on a pole, projecting images onto a wall. On top of the projector was a small video camera fitted with an infrared filter (which makes it see only infrared), and in front of the wall was a series of infrared panels, blasting the wall with infrared light. The idea is that, by blasting the wall with IR light, and having a camera that only sees IR light, anything that comes between the wall and the camera is seen as just a silhouette by the camera. So we built a little openFrameworks application that projects one of the background images full-screen and draws the silhouette seen by the camera on top in a solid color. The result is that the image being projected isn’t projected onto the people, only onto the wall. It’s kind of like a green screen, only much more ghetto – which is why we call it “The Poor Man’s Green Screen”. We basically stole the majority of setup from Zach Lieberman’s Messa di Voce – with his permission and help, of course.
The Backgrounds
Finding appropriate images was actually a lot harder than we thought. We figured out pretty early that it would be impossible to use most of the party photos we were finding online because, when projected onto the wall, the scale was all wrong. So first we had to find backgrounds with no people in them, then we had to crop and composite the people onto the images while projecting them onto the wall with someone standing up beside them. This is why you will see the half-legs and weird, ghost-like ankles and such. We instructed our photographer to aim high so that this stuff wouldn’t make it into the photos.
The Projection Software
This source code is an openFrameworks project, with project files for XCode and DevC++. It will expect you to have a webcam attached. I spent a lot of time on the menus because I wanted to be able to calibrate stuff on the fly – mostly because I was having so much trouble getting the silhouette to show up in the right place. The OpenCV can be set to do blob tracking or it can just paint the silhouettes on top of the image. I did this because I wanted to be able to give each blob an offset. It partially works.
There is also a paint brush feature to set the color of the blobs. I wanted to be able to control what color was projected onto the people so that the pictures would look more natural.
Unfortunately I only have footage of the software running on my MacBook, so it’s just looking at me with the MacBook webcam. The result is fuzzy blobs. As mentioned above, the ideal conditions involve using an IR lit wall and a camera with an IR gel.
We also had upload software created by the excellent Eric J. Olson. It takes the photos that our photographer shot and sends them to Facebook, Flickr, and any email addresses you put in. They are all captioned with something like “Check out this great party I am at! You should totally come!” Melissa has some great examples of what the software would upload to Flickr here and here.
I’m working on getting the source code for that and will post it soon.
The Result
Dave and I are currently working on a reel that will showcase the entire event, but in the meantime, here are all of the 2000+ photos that were taken that night. They were shot by Disco Meisch.
Overall, I was really impressed with how willing people were to really engage with the project. Nearly all of the 130+ people who got up on stage put on a great show – making it as entertaining for Dave and I as it (hopefully) was for them.
We will definitely be installing this piece in other locations, and we have some ideas on how to make the picture quality better, so we’re not done with this one yet.
Anywhere But Here @ Eyebeam Mixer
Our original idea grew out of a somewhat drunken conversation Dave and I were having about the site Last Night’s Party while walking home from Monkeytown one night. We both thought it was funny how people would go to parties just to get their picture taken, and how this artifact had become more important than the actual experience of the party. We thought it would be funny if there was a party in a huge, ugly, open space (like Eyebeam), with a bunch of movie sets where people could fake being at a really awesome party. And that would be the point of the party — to fake being at a better party. And thus, Anywhere But Here was born.
The Backgrounds
Finding appropriate images was actually a lot harder than we thought. We figured out pretty early that it would be impossible to use most of the party photos we were finding online because, when projected onto the wall, the scale was all wrong. So first we had to find backgrounds with no people in them, then we had to crop and composite the people onto the images while projecting them onto the wall with someone standing up beside them. This is why you will see the half-legs and weird, ghost-like ankles and such. We instructed our photographer to aim high so that this stuff wouldn’t make it into the photos.
The Projection Software
This source code is an openFrameworks project, with project files for XCode and DevC++. It will expect you to have a webcam attached. I spent a lot of time on the menus because I wanted to be able to calibrate stuff on the fly – mostly because I was having so much trouble getting the silhouette to show up in the right place. The OpenCV can be set to do blob tracking or it can just paint the silhouettes on top of the image. I did this because I wanted to be able to give each blob an offset. It partially works.
There is also a paint brush feature to set the color of the blobs. I wanted to be able to control what color was projected onto the people so that the pictures would look more natural.
Unfortunately I only have footage of the software running on my MacBook, so it’s just looking at me with the MacBook webcam. The result is fuzzy blobs. As mentioned above, the ideal conditions involve using an IR lit wall and a camera with an IR gel.
awbh.zip
The Upload Software
We also had upload software created by the excellent Eric J. Olson. It takes the photos that our photographer shot and sends them to Facebook, Flickr, and any email addresses you put in. They are all captioned with something like “Check out this great party I am at! You should totally come!” Melissa has some great examples of what the software would upload to Flickr here and here.
I’m working on getting the source code for that and will post it soon.
The Result
Dave and I are currently working on a reel that will showcase the entire event, but in the meantime, here are all of the 2000+ photos that were taken that night. They were shot by Disco Meisch.
Overall, I was really impressed with how willing people were to really engage with the project. Nearly all of the 130+ people who got up on stage put on a great show – making it as entertaining for Dave and I as it (hopefully) was for them.
We will definitely be installing this piece in other locations, and we have some ideas on how to make the picture quality better, so we’re not done with this one yet.