Judy Irvine (Michigan) and Liz Gunner (South Africa) at the DMC

This is a shot of Judy Irvine (Edward Sapir Collegiate Professor of Linguistic Anthropology and Professorr of Anthropology) & Liz Gunner (WITS Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Witswatersrand) working with me in the staff multimedia workroom at the DMC:

Liz is holding up her cell phone because they come to me for help in retrieving some audio recordings she had made with it.

I had originally met Liz in July of 2011 at the second Humanities conference sponsored by the UM African Studies Center.  Judy and other colleagues from UM were also at the conference, which was held in Johannesburg.

The two of them have been collaborating in South Africa for a while, and these recordings were from a recent visit to Soweto where they were pursuing a collaborative research project in linguistics.  Liz recorded several conversations using the audio recording function of her cell phone, as that was all she had with her at the time.

I digitized her recordings and tweaked them up to make them much more intelligible so they could better use them in their research.  All told it took about 3 hours, but they went away very satisfied with the resulting audio files.  I also put them up in Google Drive as MP3 files so they could grab them and put those files into their own Google space.

A lovely afternoon of international collaboration.  Liz was delighted that Judy had access to the resources and assistance to get to this next step in their research; she had been saving the recordings for almost a year trying to figure out what to do with them.

-t

2013 New Media Centers Conference

UM wins 2 Awards at the NMC

The UM Team won both the Audience Choice Award and one of the Judge's Awards for their Idea Lab presentation called "Connectedness, Openness and Evolution in a Learning Space", which presented the research they did with Steve Lonn on Design Lab 1

Quoting from John Williams:

"Linda Knox and Matthew Barritt presented some of the CLE/Design Lab 1/GROCS research (under Steve Lonn's direction) at the national NMC conference this week. The presentation included an interactive "create your own connected learning environment" - a somewhat high-risk proposition for this audience. It seems the principles of active peer-to-peer learning works even among the pros. Of course this included Matthew's presentation. Note that the pipe cleaner and cardboard CLE included a second interactive media display - the iPad in the left of the picture.

NMC is one of the most active learning technologies higher-ed groups, has strong pedagogical emphasis, includes many research universities, and does the research that they co-publish with ELI: EduCause as the annual Horizon Report on emerging learning technologies in higher-ed - suggested reading:  http://www.nmc.org/publications/2013-horizon-report-higher-ed"

Herein I include a bit of the inside information of how this came to be.  It should be noted that this model was made almost entirely from the broad array of "sketching tools" available in DL1.  We had to buy more magnets, more alligator clips and a bit of fabric (and only because it was a better loose-weave match than the fabric on hand).

This photo shows the 2 table layout for the NMC setup:
- a laptop on the right screening some of the timelapse footage from DL1 that was part of the research
- the foreground table holding the interactive model of DL1

You can see (from left to right):      - the projection screen ( iPad Mini)
                                                   - the green screen corner
                                                   - the workbench and shelves (just flat photos for the model)
                                                   - the conversation area
                                                   - the glass wall (one panel with the "Welcome to DL1" sign)
                                                   - the timelapse laptop (on second table)
                                                   - and you can also see the 2 prize ribbons in front...

The way it worked was that you could choose a Pipe Cleaner Person, use one of our pre-made faces or draw one yourself, place the face in the head loops, then stick the feet into the styrofoam base/floor of DL1.  If you made the right connections there (an LED person, a battery person, a connector person) your idea (LED) would come to light (light up)!

Here's the Video fly-through of our DL1 model - a video is worth 100,000 words:


Tom showing a step in building the Pipe Cleaner People.

The People Holder made from cable racks, a bookend and lots of tiny binder clips.

Linda lowering the last floor pieces into the suitcase for travel.

Here is Linda showing the model to a couple of the attendees.
Note the shining green LEDs in the model in the photo below.

Matthew talking about the research findings with attendees.
In the photo on the right the attendee is from Case Western University in Ohio, and we discovered that they are embarking on the construction of similar spaces.  We plan to talk further with them about organizing near future collaborations and activities, hopefully including faculty from both institutions.

              

Here's what it looked like most of the time: very busy!

The supply of People & screens that attendees could add to the model, and a happy participant.

                          

Here's a link to a quick stop-frame animation I made on the "set", also below.

And finally a shot of me with my very own pipe-cleaner avatar!

(the sign says "You can make a movie - it's easy!")

It was both fun and a great presentation of the work.  The photos I did not get include:

  - Linda ironing the graphics that had curled
  - me finishing making all the People at the desk in her room
  - putting various panels under a book under the TV in her room to flatten out the wall pieces

-t

3D Video Installation with Chris McNamara

5/22-24/2013

3D Video Installation with Chris McNamara 

at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery

Oshawa, Ontario, Canada

My trip started (and ended) with a wonderful train ride from Windsor to Toronto to Oshawa.  Here's the Toronto train station; notice the pay phones (!) on the right.

Canada's Via Rail is a wonderful train system, and includes free WIFI.  I was able to attend a 90 minute webinar detailing some new features of Mocha Pro (3D Camera Solving) while on the train - how cool is that?

Chris hired Jacob Mendel, a recent UM grad, to do the actual 3D filming.  A couple of years ago I worked with Jacob to get his 3D thesis film formatted into a Digital Cinema Package (DCP) so it could be screened at the TedX event at the Michigan theater.

I have been working with Chris and the 3D Lab for some months as he organized his plan for the installation and made technology decisions.  He bought 6 Vivitek DLP projectors, 6 Technovision DV-75N solid state media players and 3 "stacker" mounts for the 3 pairs of projectors.   

Interesting side note: as seen below, those stackers were originally designed to hold 2 Kodak Carousel slide projectors that would be used with a dissolve unit for slide shows (these show red/green filters on the lenses; they were probably used for anaglyph 3D showings).

I've added a schematic (below) of how the players were interconnected.  The 'Master' was in the middle pair, so ethernet cables needed to be run to all the players to make them sync to the Master.  We did this by going up to the ceiling and tying them off, then stretching them taught over to the next stack, and then running them down to the players on each platform.  You can also see my notes to remind Chris or the gallery folks how to make sure the settings are correct if they needed to get into the players after I left.

Here's a wide angle shot of the gallery:

You can see the 3 sets of projectors and the 3 screens still in their packaging along the wall that will be used for projection.  Chris is in the corner on the right working on his diorama.  We'll see more of that later.

Here I am working on the initial testing of everything before it goes up in the air.  Much easier this way.  And you'll notice that the projectors/stands are oriented with the projectors right side up.  I tried to convince Chris to hang it al upside down, but he said they tested it all this way and it would work.  Turned out to be wrong, as the amount of keystone correction needed made the image much closer to 4:3 instead of 16:9, and the image did not fill the screen properly.  So we turned them upside down and they work just fine now.  You can see that in the view below, as well as another angle on the diorama.

My main task for the installation was to get all the players working properly and playing in sync, and aligning the projector pairs.  For 3D images, getting the pair of projectors for each screen to be as close to the exact same size and shape as possible is critical creating a fatigue-free viewing experience.  Your brain makes up for a lot, but it very quickly makes your brain hurt.

Here, I am installing the polarizing filters that are required in front of each projector.  One is chosen for the left eye image and on for the right.  In effect, they are opposites: when wearing similarly polarized glasses, each eye sees only one image.  If you remove the glasses, you see the 2 overlapped images on the screen.

The screens are also important, as they must preserve the polarity of the projected images.  These screens have a silver tint, because silver works well for this - even silver spray paint if carefully applied.  Anybody remember the old movie promotional phrase "coming to the silver screen"?

This was the first view we had of all 3 screens going at the same time (sorry about all the ladders).  It was pretty cool to finally see it.  One expected, yet no less remarkable, feature was the very wide viewing angle due to the use of circular polarizing filters.  You could stand at either end of the gallery and still have an excellent 3D image on the farthest screen.

The few folks from the museum that had a chance to get a quick look were all just astonished by the depth of the images and the overall experience.

These are the speakers provided by the gallery.  Great speakers, but no volume controls.  Fortunately we could adjust that on the payers, but it was not that convenient.  On top are the custom cables we had to get made by a local rock and roll music store: 75 ft. stereo mini extension cables.  Now that's something you don't need every day, eh?  Those went from the media players, located at the projectors, up and across the ceiling, down behind the gallery wall and the back up to behind each screen.  At that point, I had split a 6 ft. stereo mini to 2x RCA male cable to reach out to each of the speakers on either side of the 7 ft. screen.

Below are a few more shots of the diorama: a closeup of some of the buildings, a closeup of his "billboards" and a wider shot of the whole thing.  It is designed to be viewed from the front through all 3 cases.  The projector in back is showing footage Chris took in Shanghai when we went to China with the UM Symphony Orchestra in 2011.

I hope to add some photos of the more finished look of the whole installation, but we were so busy this morning I had no time to take any.  I had to leave before everything was done and I made my train with a full 3 minutes to spare!  I'm hoping to get some from Chris on his return later today.

Finally, this coincidence was too much.  Chris and I took a break on Thursday around 5:30 and stopped in at a local pub.  Here is a shot of the beers they had on tap.  We could *not* make this stuff up….

Later,

-t

Pat Oleszko & Lolita Hernandez at MOCAD for ART X Detroit

April 9, 2013

I picked up Pat Oleszko at the airport Tuesday night and we went to MOCAD to start setting up the installation/performance she is doing with Lolita Hernandez.

Lolita is the artist that is listed in the Art X information; Pat is not.  I did not make it to the opening last night but hope to see their event tonight at 7:00 pm.  Feeling like I'm coming down with whatever has been going around, so maybe not.

You have to check out Pat's website to get any idea of how wild and wonderful her stuff is; I can't do it justice.  But here are a couple of pics I took when setting up that might give you a hint.  She does things that have volume - stuffed costumes, etc.

-t

Pat sorting out some of the stuff she ha sent ahead. 

Pat's "Ballerinas", part of the chotchke she created to be in the set. 

In the MOCAD gift shop - SUN RA, a Detroit artist. 

A different exhibit in the MOCAD space, in another room.

Fool Moon - the Big Fun!

April 5, 2013

The Big Fun

It was so much fun on the street Friday night!  Here are a few pix and clips, but you can find lots more out there by searching "Fool Moon 2013".

But first, here's my timelapse - "Fool Moon in 55 Seconds" from YouTube.  If you look really close, you might see Jim and Anne Duderstadt on the right side sidewalk, just behind the scaffolding.  They were down there with some friends and were very enthusiastic about the whole event when I had a moment to say hi to them.

We called the projection we created "Moon Unit Face Pong".  A person could stick their face into a hole in a green screen and they would become the man/woman in the moon that was being used as the ball in a game of Pong being played by 2 people in the crowd using Wii remotes.  Whew...

(I strongly suggest that you watch it Full Screen - the bottom right button in the viewer)



A couple of photos:

The view from the rooftop of Cafe Felix's chairs.

Someone sticking their face into the photo booth; that's how you got your face as the wo/man in the moon.

View of the laptop running "Resolume", the VJ software that put all the pieces together.

View from the roof of Washington St. in full swing. 

An interesting collage: the Pong game with video effects, and in front are 2 luminaries in the street.
The face luminary looks like it's part of the game.

A view of it all: Pong on the left, Lasers on the right.

And a trio video clips:


Watching someone put their face into the photo booth and then show up "in the moon" and in the Pong game.



See the "Wo/man in the Moon" in our game of Pong, and hear me exhort the crowd with "You only regret the thing in life that you don't do!"



Shows the Resolume laptop running the show and the resulting projections.  At the very end, you get to see the LASERS in action.

-t

TedX 2013

I am one of the Faculty/Staff advisors for the student group 'TedX'.  They put on the UM's version of TedX each year, and they do a pretty amazing job.

This is the 4th year they have done this.  The first year was pretty low key, held in an auditorium on North Campus.  The next year they rented the Michigan Theater and sold it out.  Last year they rented the Power Center and sold it out.  They are back at the Power Center this year and it is once again sold out.

Here are a few shots of the setup from Thursday April 4, 2013.

The 2 laptop table driving all the PPT presentations & the timer.

Mary Heinen, UM School of Social Work, rehearsing.
You can see the PPT monitor and the Timer monitor.
All presenters watch the clock count down their time.

Preparing the doors to hold all the badges for attendees to pick up.

The badges being hung.

The projector inside the League.

The projection on Burton Tower.

Cldtus on the lighting booth, with the stage in the BG.

Me on the stage!  I finally got a photo of *me* at an event.

TedX - the Day of....

Badges out on the lawn at Power Center, ready for pickup.

The first speaker, Robert Quinn.  TedX is off and running!

Pop's Packing, Mary Beth, and Solid State Media Players

Pop's Packing and Mary Beth

I have been working with Mary Beth Carolan on her thesis installation in Hamtramck.  I have provided her with 2 of the solid state media players I have in my inventory and worked with her to figure out why one of her movies has been problematic in playback.

For several months she has been taking advantage of the extensive and sophisticated resources of the Dmc for her thesis project, which involves the capture, editing and presentation of HD video.

All is now well, although the actual sync of the 2 players continues to be problematic.  Mary Beth has found a way around the continuing issues with her movies that works for her installation.

Despite the issues she has had around syncing her 2 movies, the use of SS media players for this kind of installation is still one of the easiest and best options.

These are appliances that are much less expensive than, say, a Mac Mini for displaying media files.  they have a different interface and given the ongoing issues with Mary Beth that should have not been a problem there are still things about using them that need tobe addressed.

I am in close communication with the manufacturer of these devices about all of this, and they have just released an updated version of their media player.

Even though the official opening happened last weekend, stand by for further announcements.

-t