Pressure Project 2 – Ashley Browne
Posted: February 22, 2022 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »My pressure project 2 uses conductive paint and the MakeyMakey to make a pseudo video synthesizer using Isadora.
On the MakeyMakey, the connection inputs are using the ‘W’ ‘A’ and ‘D’ keys that each trigger a unique video effect in Isadora. The effects are able to be combined simultaneously, and the user is able to mix and match. With the conductive paint, I did a little research about how to work with it before I started. I learned that each unique signal or ‘key’ could not overlap with the other, meaning I had to be very deliberate about where I painted each section. Also, I made sure to work with separate brushes and cups of water so that there was no contamination or mixing between the acrylic paint and the conductive paint.
I’ve labeled the 3 effects as:
- Glitch
- Split Screen
- Surprise (Video Portal)
For the glitch effect, I used a GLSL Shader from the shadertoy website that produces a glitch overlay on top of the video feed. This is triggered by tapping anywhere along the black line of paint on the canvas. Here is the link to the code I used and my patch in Isadora:
https://www.shadertoy.com/view/XtK3W3
I used a gate and toggle switch to turn the GLSL Shader on and off when triggered.
The split screen was fairly simple, I just split up the video feed into two projectors that were similarly triggered on and off using the toggle actor.
Lastly was the Video Portal patch, which was one of the more complex ones. This was ultimately my surprise or secret reveal. It reveals the 2nd video underneath, which plays through the shape of a circle or portal. I learned how to do this by searching through the Isadora forum page, and messed around with the Alpha Channel to get different results. It basically connects the second video into an Alpha Channel that projects on to the specific shape actor. The Get Stage Size ensures that the video proportions are the same.
I put each effect into its own User Actor for better organization and had a movie player and projector set up independently. Here is final documentation of the project: