Cycles 1-3
Posted: April 28, 2021 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »For the duration of the current millennium, I have been working in the live audio field. I have also been involved in a handful of theatre events. It is through this work that I have grown attached to the practice of providing support to performers. Within the pandemic milieu, I have been severed from my Allen & Heath digital audio console for the longest period yet. More importantly, I have no access to performers to support. I am not much of a performer myself, so I have resorted to the lowly wooden train set.
In Cycle 1, I created a green box setup for the purpose of chromakeying my train into an interactive environment. It was a simple setup: 2 IKEA Mulig clothing racks to provide a structure for mounting lights and cameras, 3.5 sheets of green posterboard, 2 Logitech webcams(1 of which is 1080p), a pair of mini LED soft box lights for key lighting and a single soft LED for back lighting.
Within Isadora, I patched each of the webcams into a distinct video effect, a spinner actor, and a master RGBA/Colorizer. Using the “Simple” preset in TouchOSC on an iPad and an iPhone, I was able to set OSC watchers to trigger each of the effects, the spinner and the colorizer. The effects were triggered with the MPC-style drum pad “buttons” in TouchOSC on the iPad and the colorizer was set to an XY pad on the iPhone. All of this is layered over a blue train themed video. The result is a patch that makes the train a true “performer” dancing to a Kick and Snare beat…that no one can hear…yet.
Cycle 2 began with the untimely death of my green box in a gravity related accident. In dealing with this abrupt change in resources, the cycle saw the implementation of Ableton Live. Woven into the Cycle 1 patch is a change of OSC channels in order to line up with the MIDI notes of a Kick and Snare in Ableton. I built in some ambition into my Ableton set by assigning every button in the “Simple” TouchOSC preset. The result is a similar video performance by the train, but now we can hear its music.
Cycle 3 began with a number of deviations from the train theme. I was looking for new ways to integrate my previous discoveries in a manner that would be less constrained by the physical domain existing solely in my house. I toyed around with some inverse chromakey patches that would sense the head of a blue-yarn mallet and trigger a sound. In returning to the train theme, I attempted to make an overlay that would use blob tracking and proximity targets to trigger sounds.
Ultimately, I resurrected the green box…and it the product looks and behaves a bit like a zombie. I went with a different Eyes++ setup in tandem with a simple motion tracker. As it turns out, I messed up the Eyes++ to the point that it wasn’t doing anything at all. In my final patch, the motion sensor is simply turning a train sound on and off as the train enters the frame of the camera. I intended to implement an cartoon overlay that would follow the train around the track thanks to the Eyes++ rig. Alas, the Roger Rabbit train is Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Film thanks to a supply chain disruption of that most important of resources: time.
In this patch, I used video of the train from two different angles: bird’s eye and slightly downward. This made the patch easier to work with since I wasn’t constantly turning the train on and off. It also zombified the Cycle a bit more with the train no longer being a live performer. However, I justify this decision with the idea that the train was only ever a stand-in for a live performer.
On a final note, I will be packaging the final patch for future enjoyment to be accessed on this site.