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Virtual Entity Alpha Minus Minus - CODENAME JAILBIRD - August 2009

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In past months I have been researching work of artist Michelle Teran, that resulted in an extensive interview on her work, methods and positions when working with social and media networks within urban environments
(http://MichelleTeran.interview.pr0be.info/)

Michelle Teran will conduct 2 day WORKSHOP as a part of Imaginary Property event City Lab starting on Thursday 21st at noon in Annex (workspace of Jan van Eyck Academie) and concluding it with public action on evening of Friday 22nd (could be as late as 23:59 ;-)
It will include technical tutorial, discussion, city research, experiments with different media technologies and setups, mapping walks and maybe something else...

The festival Liwoli, happening in Linz between April 23rd and 25th, and named 'Hacklab for art and Open Source', was a great gathering of very interesting people. Among other things, including a very crazy performance that culminated with the total erasure of the system while making real time video with Pure Data (without back up and in a totally unsafe fashion), the Virtual Entity 'research software' was presented during the Friday evening session.

The first Imaginary Property intervention inspired a new thread of research. As we decided to implement a non-structured experiment, Ted Byfield, our guest, was invited to improvise on the topic of Imaginary Property following a very loose and open structure. His intervention revealed, by the end of the meeting, a powerful new approach to the topic. Ted started introducing himself following salient events of his own biography which could inject a reflection on our research; by the end of his speech, I could draw an unexpected connection on my note book: there are similarities between systems to define time, so to say calendars, and domain name systems.

Even before finishing my own infrared led touch screen, but after trying other screens and tables built with the same kind of technology, Luis came up with very valuable information: 4 Infrared lasers provided with special line generators, and placed in the corners of the screen can substitute the endless rows of leds and the soldering that they implied.
Again, a very generous group of people related to NUI group have posted the info on how to implement this formula online: http://labs.ideo.com/2009/02/11/hacked-rear-projection-tv-into-multitouc...

For this part I will do some research in using Touchlib http://nuigroup.com/touchlib/
"Touchlib is a library for creating multi-touch interaction surfaces. It handles tracking blobs of infrared light, and sends your programs these multi-touch events, such as 'finger down', 'finger moved', and 'finger released'. It includes a configuration app and a few demos, and will interface with most types of webcams and video capture devices."

Because I'm not a programmer / engineer myself, I will have to use TUIO protocol and something more manageable such as Flash, VVVV, Processing, PureData, or something of that sort. My friend Luis Fernández is coaching me through email, for which I'm quite grateful.

Regarging the touchscreen itself, it is still not 100%finished because I don't have a special kind of silicon which is needed in order to avoid air bubbles preventing the contact of the fingers with the acrylic plate and the projecting surface. I'm looking for ways to solve that issue. However it seems that there is a TUIO simulator, which allows writing applications and testing them without having to use any kind of multitouch interface, so it won't be necessary for me to have the projector, and all the screen paraphernalia on all the time while experimenting.
The most common simulator is the one made by the team who designed the reacTable at my former university in Barcelona: http://mtg.upf.es/reactable/?pic=reactivision04.png

With this, and the right libs and plug ins, I will be able to start testing my experiments quite soon.

After the experience with "Frontera" which worked with a kind of gesture tracking that is more similar to the single touch interaction, I'm experimenting with other forms of multitouch screen interaction. The first one I'm looking into is FTIR, which is becoming very widely used. Great tutorials about how to make your own multitouch screen can be found online. I'm using one that I found while surfing this site:
http://www.nuigroup.com

Frontera is actually kept at the Jan van Eyck Academy where it was shown in a sort of open studio environment during he opening week and at the Zichtopmaastricht where Jan van Eyck was the focus of the month. This project will be improved at the academy and serve as departing point for my research.

• Possible fields of study suggested by the work Frontera (to be contrasted and complemented with theoretical strand of Just Touch):
o Self image in the age of Facebook
o Touch in general and touch screens in particular.
o Portrayal by the study and depiction of personal
body gestures.
o Interactive high resolution portrayal: midway between photography and HD video.
o The mirror image.
o Prison, imprisonment.