More specifically, what we're trying to do is allow a pair of dancers to capture, modify, and project looped videos of their movement during a live performance. To do this, the two dancers use onstage controllers (perhaps Novation Launchpads) to trigger motion capture with their respective Microsoft Kinect depth cameras. Using both their controllers and bodily motion (i.e., gestural control through the Kinects, which will run through Ableton Live and/or Max/MSP/Jitter), the dancers can control the playback of both the music and video projections of their dancing. The dancers will accompanied by an offstage visualist who will program the controllers, load audio clips, and control a central projector.
Well, that's the idea, anyhow.
This past Tuesday (01 May 2012) I submitted a grant application for this project to the UVU Scholarly Council. If you're interested, you can see the application letter here. It's a quick turnaround so I should know by the 15th if the grant gets funded. If yes, fabulous! If no, I'll see how much of it I can get done without all of the hardware and software.
So, I invite anyone and everyone to check on the project's progress. Please feel free to comment on the document by selecting the relevant text and then going to "Insert > Comment" in the Google Docs menu. Any insight or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Oh, my, it turns out that there's yet another Brave New World out there. I just found out about "machinima" (a concatenation of "Machine" and "Cinema," as you might have guessed), which is basically movies made with video game software. It's a way to get 3D animation without actually having to be able to animate. Fascinating. While machinima apparently has its roots in first-person shooter games like Doom, where gamers would record the action to show how quickly they could get through a level, people soon found they could write their own scripts and action. The comic series "Red vs. Blue," which uses characters from Halo, is a good example of such adaptation.
On the other hand, as far as I can tell, there are a couple of video games that seem almost created for machinima, the most familiar of which is Second Life. It looks like there are entire (online) film festivals dedicated to Second Life machinima, such as the Ma Machinima International Festival. Also, a quick Google search for "Second Life" Machinima reveals a number of tutorials and videos on how to get started.
But it's even easier in the simulation game The Movies, which really was created for making movies. I even got a (miniscule) book on how to do this called Machinima: How you can use The Movies to produce your own animated films by David Mark. I've installed the game on both of our MacBooks so my son Quinn can hack-and-slash at it on one while I go through my overly-methodical, start-at-the-beginning approach on the other.
Anyhow, it's a fascinating discovery for me. I can't wait to see what I can do with it. I'll let you know.
I'm planning on creating a whole bunch of things on my computer that can't be adequately represented with screenshots. (I will, however, still include those as often as possible.) As such, I thought it would be nice to upload some small videos so my professors could see what I'm up to. I already have a YouTube channel at youtube.com/bartonpoulson but that functions primarily for my statistics tutorials (which are doing very nicely, thank you) and I didn't want to mix these up with those.
At first I thought I'd try posting my artsy videos on the extra artsy Vimeo service. But then everything got very, very complicated. Vimeo wanted money, they wanted me to wait 30 minutes to see my 30 second clip, and so on. Then I thought I would try WordPress' own service, VideoPress. But that, too, looked like it would be expensive and cumbersome.
So, my son Quinn and I spent about an hour and a half to do what could be done in 10 minutes by someone who knows what they're doing and, given the not-quite-perfect replacement parts, the fit's a little off, but — wonder of wonders — it works again! It resembles Frankenstein's own Macbook now, but at least I can keep my spiffy external keyboard all to myself.
Anyhow, it's just fabulous to have video lessons that I can pause, back up, repeat, and so on. Now I understand why my statistics and research videos on YouTube have been so helpful. (You can see those at youtube.com/bartonpoulson.) I've been going through lynda.com's introductory courses for Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Flash, and Fireworks. When I have a little time, I hope to go through the courses for Python, CSS, HTML, Google Analytics, typography, etc. Also, the "Creative Inspirations" series is a gem, too. It has extended interviews with prominent professionals where you/I can see all of these tools in use. My personal favorite is with one of my high school heroes, Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo. Whee!