Motion, light & sound / Kinect & Madlight from things happen on Vimeo.
In a teaser video just released by Spain’s Things Happen, a silhouetted performer uses arm position to sweep through RGB colors and trigger sound cues. It’s the latest effort to integrate the immersive media environment with a performer’s body, part spectacle, part interface.
The ingredients, apart from Microsoft’s ubiquitous Kinect depth camera:
Motion capture + image = light + sound
Software:
MadMapper [using MadMapper’s Madlight feature to trigger lighting]
Quartz composer
Ableton live
Music: Sun Glitters x Isan – Snowfall
The nice thing about the inter-linked, comment-enabled Web is, we get to see more.
Inverting the relationship of color to output, Things Happen uses a color turntable to trigger lights and sound. The colors themselves become a score for audiovisuals, a return to the days of optical discs and optical film tracks.
Light turntable test. from things happen on Vimeo.
Deets:
Real time experiment with video, audio and RGB led light.
Software:
Madmapper (Madlight)
Quartz Composer
Live
Hardware:
2 RGB led strip
Led controller
Enttec ODE
This sort of light immersion we’ve seen in commercial products and experiments alike. So, through Vimeo comments, we’re also treated to this “Lightosphere” project, combining interaction and RGB light. It’s the work of Tobias Schmid und Michael Nef of Bern, Switzerland’s Captns & Partner. (Mmm… 1×1 pixel color! Via the Italian site Interactive Design.)
Interaction Design > Lightosphere from Captns & Partner on Vimeo.
Lots more on the Facebook page for that project.
It’s lovely in a way to see the convergence of these projects. Far from disheartening designers, I hope that this sort of resonance should encourage pushing boundaries (in the spirit of competition). Also, speaking as press here, critical mass is often what an idea needs to take off – particularly with installation-specific projects that by definition must take place in only one location, as a global audience grows in their appetite from this work.
It also suggests that, perhaps, you’re not crazy – that someone’s on to something.
Keep iterating. And keep magically making pretty lights happen with your hands.
Seen other projects, or worked on one of your own? Let us know.
Thanks to Tom Phillipson for sending this in.