Weeknotes are “about reflecting on your work, your achievements, and what’s on deck.“   Simple.

It has been 145 weeks since I started as a fellow at Eyebeam – arguably the beginning of my professional career.  So, what happened on this 145th week?

This Week

This week marked the beginning of the end of the Eyebeam Fellowship process, which started way back in November. On Monday, several applicants Skyped in and gave presentations about their applications.  Due to a confluence of factors, just this week we made our final recommendations to Amanda, the director of Eyebeam.  Surprisingly, it was a relatively easy process.  The applications were fairly strong, but the decisions just seemed to come easily for the committee.

After work I prepared for my second Code for Art class at Parsons.  We are currently in the “c++ crash course” section of the class.  I was over-ambitious in thinking that I could get through nested loops, casting, arrays, structs, “scope” and pointers all in one class.  I think we just barely made it through Arrays. So everything else will have to wait until this Tuesday.  It seems like I’ve got a good bunch of students this semester, although I think I might have scared some of them away with my first class, in which I assumed that they were all completely comfortable with Java/Processing.  I scaled back the class considerably, so hopefully I won’t lose any more students.

The gang at TV of Tomorrow asked for a schematic for the World Series of ‘Tubing, so I put together this little drawing.  You may not be able to tell by looking at it, but I spent way too much time on it.  Emma is still working on negotiations with the people at Vuzix to possibly get us some augmented reality goggles.

I made some minor improvements on the POP magazine server application to prepare for upcoming projects that will use the same types of techniques. In addition to doing SURF marker recognition, which only uses shapes, I will be implementing some color matching features.  The POP application was finally approved by Apple and launched, with is exciting.

On Wednesday, we had the first meeting about the upcoming Eyebeam Mixer.  In attendance was the video art group Cheryl, a representative from NYC Resistor, Kyle Lapidus of LoVid, Erik Fabian, Bennett Williamson, and Paul Amatai – the creator of the Mixer.  We had a great talk about some of the aspects of the Mixer, the theme of which is “Olympiad”.  Aaron and I were put in charge of spearheading the Torch Relay project, which is top secret for right now, but won’t be for very long.

Cass and I bought a shitload of American Apparrel shirts for an (another) upcoming top-secret project.  Stay tuned for more info.

On Thursday there were more Fellowship presentations, including a bunch of friends of mine: Aaron Meyers, Jon Cohrs, and Hans-Christoph Steiner.  Instead of having the regular first-Thursday-of-the-month Project Blackbird meeting this week, we decided to go to the Reggie Watts/Tommy Smith Radioplay on the 18th.  Should be great.  That evening I had a few beers with Aaron to celebrate him getting through his Fellowship presentation.  I also bit the bullet and bought a legit copy of Ableton Live with which to make new mixes.

On Friday I met with Roland Gebhardt about potentially doing a new website for him.  I suggested he use indexhibit. After that, we had the final fellowship review meetings, and then I met with Stephanie to discuss what we will be presenting at CAA.

On Saturday, I worked on getting a matrix transformation from SURF descriptors in openFrameworks.  This will be useful in many upcoming projects, but it is proving to be difficult.

Finally, just today I met with Aaron to discuss a meeting tomorrow at Warp Records.  We will be doing some work for them at some point.  I also discovered MinimumNoise – a crowdsourcing platform for audio work.  I set up a job to crowdsource the editing of the first episode of my Crowded radio show.

On Deck

Tomorrow is the meeting at Warp Records. In the afternoon, I will be e-working with intern/collaborator extraordinaire Michael on some final additions to the Laborers of Love project. We want to have the project in a presentable because on Thursday I fly out to Chicago to meet Stephanie so that we can present it at the CAA New Media Caucus.

On the 18th, Aaron and I will be going to Materials for the Arts, a magical place in Long Island City where groups donate all kinds of wonderful things that you can just go and take.  Aaron and I went there previously to get materials for Praying@Home.  I had to write some long-overdue thank-you notes to the people and groups who donated the materials that we took last time.  This is one of the conditions for coming back.

Monday evening I will be prepping for Code for Art on Tuesday.  Whenever I find time, I will be trying to conquer the problem of getting a matrix transformation from SURF descriptors, and trying to find time to work on the new World Series of ‘Tubing site.  I was working pretty hard on the site two weeks ago, but couldn’t find time this week.  Despite many attempts, I couldn’t get my head around CakePHP, so instead I made my own MCV framework using the Smarty template engine, PHPActiveRecord, BlueprintCSS, JQuery, and JQueryUI.  And then the Zend GData extension is int there too for YouTube data API access.

It’s application season!  Coming up: FileLux, HarvestWorks, Ars, Future Generation, and Megapolis

The final lineup is (from left to right):

1. David Jimison – mobile technologies expert
2. Steve Lambert – culture hacker, activist
3. Andrea Polli – sound artist, environmentalist
4. Michael Mandiberg – browser artist, environmental activist
5. Jeff Crouse – me. you’re already on my site.
6. Friedrich Kirschner – machinima storyteller, tool-maker
7. Christina Kral – videographer

The dates are:

1. Saturday, November 15th: Mills College – Studio Art Department
2. Sunday, November 16th: Berkeley College – Berkeley Center for New Media and Berkeley Art Museum
3. Wednesday, November 17th: UC Santa Cruz – Computer Science Department
4. Tuesday, November 18th: UCLA – Design | Media Arts
5. Monday, November 19th: UC Santa Barbara -  Department of Art
6. Thursday, November 20th: Integrated Media Program
7. (tentative) Friday, November 21st: UC Irvine – Arts Computation Engineering [ACE] Program

2008 Eyebeam Roadshow Catalog (PDF)** – This catalog contains all of the workshops that we are offering at each stop of the show.  The specifics haven’t been nailed down yet, but we will be doing some combination of artist talks and workshops at each of the venues.

If you live near one of these schools and would like to lend your couch to a traveling artist, please contact me.  We’re doing this thing on the cheap.

** Here is a new version of the catalog!  2008 Eyebeam Roadshow Catalog (PDF)

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

See the roadshow site for more information.

Dear (Museum Booker),

We are writing to gauge your interest in hosting a presentation and workshop by a renegade team of artists and hackers at your (venue).

The Eyebeam Roadshow is looking for hosts for its Fall of 2008 tour. Eyebeam is New York’s premier center for art and technology and will be shuttling a small group of fellows and artists to various venues across the United States to excite, inspire and amaze. The Eyebeam Roadshow is part of our education program and consists of a vibrant series of mini-lectures and skill-share workshops, from the distinguished roster of artists who have worked within Eyebeam’s OpenLab and Production Lab.

Lecture topics may include: art and technology; copyright; open-source hardware and software; public space; hacking as an art form; how to write the world’s worst artist statement; creating tools for dissent; and other nascent projects developed at Eyebeam.

There is no ulterior motive. We only ask for any support you may be able to give. Our artists are genuinely interested in engaging in discussion about the issues their projects raise with audiences beyond New York and the Internet. We would be documenting the spots visited on the tour, and feeding back to Eyebeam information about the other cool stuff being made across the country.

In 2007 the Roadshow stopped in Chicago:

“Eyebeam is North America’s leading institution for producing crucial and critical art and technology projects. The Eyebeam roadshow was a perfect method to take the screen on the road and into the gallery, bringing creators directly to the public. We hope to make Eyebeam an annual presence and featured program for years to come.” – Ed Marszewski, Versionfest Chicago

More information about the Roadshow can be found at http://roadshow.eyebeam.org

If you are interested in hosting the Eybeam Roadshow, please contact the Eyebeam Production Manager, Stephanie Hunt with dates you’d be hoping to host us.

Sincerely,
Jeff Crouse

Okay – I was rushed.

And the audio on this one is really off… We’re working on it.

Dirt Party Kiosk

This software was running on a kiosk machine at the Futuresonic Dirt Party. It basically allows people to come up and dig up dirt about people they know and create the LOLCat-style captioned photos that get sent to the central repository.
http://svn.digitalsituations.com/dirtpartykiosk/

Anywhere But Here Uploader

This is another kiosk application that allows people to insert a card reader with photos and send them out to Flickr, PhotoBucket, Facebook, and email.

http://svn.digitalsituations.com/photoblaster/

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.

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.

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).

For more pictures from the installation, check out the page on the Digital Situations site.

Please check out the DoubleHappinessJeans site for more information/updates.

Gearbox is the outcome of twelve-months development work between the MediaShed and Eyebeam Art and Technology Centre in New York, to create a resource for low-budget filmmaking. Comprised of “how to” step by step examples, Gearbox shows people innovative ways of recording footage using unusual combinations of found resources (such as CCTV Video Sniffin’ or Spy Kiting) and low-budget methods of reproducing professional film making techniques (for example, achieving a crane shot using a fishing pole).

“Taken at face value, You3b is an absolutely horrible idea. ”
- downloadsquad.com

“If your Youtube addiction has you seeking out more and more videos, constantly, non-stop, perhaps you’d be satisfied once and for all with You3B.”
-killerstartups.com