VDO

“PLAY” is an interactive installation permeated with stars. It let’s you create your own starfield, in so doing it encourages a creative response and an emotional experience. Given such the interactive situation between human and computer generated images, this experience gives you an appreciation of beauty of stars as well as promoting a dynamic playful state of mind by various sounds, graphics and dramatic elements such as the “big bang”.

FEEDBACK

Finally, all the functions on my script are fully work. I did make some number change from what I had an experiment in the projection room and I had a good feedback from one of the multimedia supervisor of NTU.

From the beginning when you see my work, the word “Play?” will encourage you and giving you a curiosity of my work by asking the spectator to have a play with, also wondering what is going to happen. Since you walk pass, their will be a star created and following your movement, but ; the play text will still there until you have created a lager movement or move closer to the screen. With the massive motion or side by side movement, you will be able to create an explosion according to the number of star created. In addition, an explosion will trigger at exactly position that the massive movement is created.

Another feature is the sound, from what I did for now are the panning and volume effect which is came out to be a stunning result. The beep sound, which created by the following star, is trigger and panning left to right, right to left following the spectator. Also, the level of volume is controlled by the distance from the screen of the spectator.

However, what I will develop near future is to minimize all elements in the explosion effect, having a different bang and galaxy create, also dissimilarity of explosion sound. Furthermore, maybe I’ll have a “play?” text following the spectator, to create more encouragement from them.

For now, I’ll play with the code to get the best result from my script. Do some change to get the final piece with one one explosion.

The next thing I have to do is the shoot the documentary of my work which will start on thursday the first of july.

Cheers.

LAYOUT

Here is the draft layout for my exposition. This will be on the screen, showing three different type of works. First, the video documentation, I’ll document the spectator who plays with my work and editing with some footage of stars. Next, pictures, I’ll put in the picture of my progress while I was creating the piece of work. Last, the live play, which will be in the big one. I’ll set up the webcam above the screen, allowing the audience who walk pass engaging and creating their experience. The description will be provided, giving an explanation about the background, objective, how to play, software and hardware.

ALMOST

Well…it’s coming to the final part of MA. Most of the script are almost done, all the function are installed and triggered. However, few number needs to be change and experiment about it. What I need to experiments are number of  scanning system. First, the staroffset and scan interval to balance the scanning line. To triggering the explosion effect, I’m using the number of star created (following star). Thus; the number of maximum stars needs to be considered, also; the explosion trigger multiplication (starmax*number). Next, the reset count system and the bang timer, which will setting the idle timing before running another following star again. Last, the test pixel different that set a sensitivity of the camera respond.

Another element to and a play with is the sound system. It is working fine but I need to have an experiment in the room with speakers to find out the final resolution.

The Sound of Pulsar

http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/~pulsar/Education/Sounds/sounds.html

http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/~pulsar/Education/Sounds/vela.au

SPACE SOUND

What Does Space Sound Like?

“By tuning in to different parts of the radio spectrum, many astronomical objects can be heard clearly and distinctly.Radio Astronomy is an attempt to depict some of these complex audio events.”

“The complex interplay between the planet Jupiter and its volcanic moon, Io, produces “radio noise storms”, which can be heard on the radio band from about 15 MHz up to 38 MHz. A storm can last from a few minutes to several hours. Two distinctive types of bursts can be received by radio astronomers during a storm. L-Bursts (long bursts of radiation) vary slowly in intensity with time, lasting from a few seconds to several tens of seconds and have bandwidths of a few MHz. L-Bursts sound like ocean waves breaking up on a beach. S-Bursts (short bursts of radiation) have durations of a few thousandths to a few hundredths of a second and can occur at rates of tens of bursts per second. Groups of S-Bursts sound like popcorn popping, or like a handful of pebbles thrown onto a tin roof.”

“The Sun is also a very commonly heard object via radio astronomy. When there is a solar flare on the Sun’s surface, it is often accompanied by a burst of radio energy projected into space. This energy can be monitored with standard ShortWave and VHF radio receivers. Solar bursts typically last from half a minute to a couple of minutes and often sound like a rapid hissing noise followed by a gradual decrease back to the original audio level.”

“Audio can also be used to describe more distant and abstract phenomena in space. Pulsars are a good example. A pulsar is a small spinning neutron star which contains an enormous amount of energy which causes it to turn on its axis, or rotate, very rapidly. Pulsars rotate between less than 1 time per second up to 642 times per second. It is very difficult for us to understand the significance of this through visual media. But audio or data sonification can really bring this to life. For example the B0329+54 Pulsar rotates around 1.40 times per second. Each rotation can be heard as a click, or a beat, and through audio it sounds like a slow steady metronome. The Vela Pulsar, lies near the centre of the Vela supernova remnant, which is the debris of the explosion of a massive star about 10,000 years ago, rotates at about 11 times per second, and thus has a much faster rhythm.”

“The terrific amount of energy it takes to spin a star on its axis at this pace, and the speed at which these rotations take place, is more easily signified in audio, than in visual media.”

“http://www.radio-astronomy.net/”

I was trying to look for the sound from the space so I need to know what does it sound like. In order to put it on my final piece if work when the star creates. As a result, I’m using a beep sound which I think it is similar to the  actual sound from the space. Also, I created a background sound by mixing a different low frequency audio and a bit of computer system sound.

TRIGGER DESIGN PROCESS

Trigger Design for sound and explosion.

The scanning system for star_motion is done by calculating the different between pixels which the computer is able to scan left-right, right-left and top-bottom, so when the spectator moves, it will gives the dissimilarity  between pixels and that’s where the graphic can generate.

The variables that we can get from this scanning system: (max X,Y), (min X,Y), (∑x), (∑y), number of stars.

The formula for triggering the graphic :

( ∑xⁿ⧸n ) , ( ∑yⁿ⧸n ) to create boundary for panning sound .

( maxXⁿ – minXⁿ ) , ( maxYⁿ – minYⁿ ) creating a center point for volume and star size.

( number of star = n ) this can be used to create the explosion.