super-i presents itself as a pair of wearable goggles with a camera on front. There’s a little box containing some electronics that let you apply different filters to the image from the camera before feeding it back to the goggles, so that you can experience the world as seen through photoshop-style filters, or - and this is what makes it interesting - as ascii art!

This piece was featured on Slashdot as “realtime ASCII Goggles” and after that all over the place, but most of them failed to dig up what it’s called and who did it, presenting it as made by “some russian artists”. Shame!

The artists are Shulgin and Chebyshev, people. Find out more at www.critipop.com and easylife.org.

Shulgin is also one of the founders of runme.org, an archive of software art.

Example Pure Data patch

Pd (aka Pure Data) is a real-time graphical programming environment for audio, video, and graphical processing. You can download Pd for free from puredata.info. You can also find some tutorials and other info to get you started. Pd is available for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux.

Pd is one of those graphical programming environments where you make little boxes that you connect with lines - similar to Max/MSP, but Pd is free, and more focused on audio. Personally I tend to find these graphical programming environments rather hard to work with. The curious thing about them is that it is usually just a simple to do something complex as to do something (seemingly) simple - for example, in PD, it is just as simple to mix two audio signals as it is to add two integers. And how hard is it? Well, if you need to add two integers, any regular programming language is easier to use. But if you need to mix two channels of audio - or do any other kind of audio processing - Pd is really worth checking out.

If you’re wondering what the patch (Pd programs are referred to as “patches”) above does, here’s what: The “metro” is a metronome that sends a “bang” (that activates whatever comes next) every 1000 ms. The delay box delays its signal with 300 ms. The boxes with two numbers each (127 250, 0 250) are message boxes that send their messages to the “line” object, which delivers a “ramp” - a linear interpolation. That part taken together generates a signal that will rise every second. Below this the signal is scaled down by 127 before it hits the mysterious *~ box. As you might guess, * means multiply. Less obvious is the tilde, which indicates we’re multiplying signals, not numbers. Multiplying the signal like this means to change the volume. The signal is the signal that comes from the dac~ box, which is a digital-to-analog conversion box - meaning it picks up the microphone. It goes to the dac~ box, which means it gets sent to the speakers.

So… what does it do, exactly? Well, I used a more complex version of this in an exhibition were a microphone with an extra amplifier picked up ambient sounds from the exhibition room, and then played the sounds back to a speaker in the ceiling. Instead of just a simple pulse like in this patch it made “heartbeat” sounds, using the sounds from the room itself. (And yes, it had to be tweaked so it wouldn’t create a feedback loop). Instead of the metro is used a signal coming from an Arduino board to synchronize the sound with a sculpture of a beating heart in a glass jar, which I already wrote about here.

OpenFrameworks is a cross-platform, open-source C++ library for creative coding. It seems to be really catching on in the new media field, and a lot of artists and hackers are now using it. Watch the video I posted here, “Made with openFrameworks” for some examples of how it has and can be used, and some interviews with some people using it.

Basically what openFrameworks (”oF” for short) does is to allow you to easily use graphics, audio and video (generating as well as playing from files) and using stuff like video tracking (using OpenCV) and audio inputs. It is also easy to extend it further using other C++ libraries or using inputs from e.g. an Arduino board.

It is a C++ library which really means you’ll have to know (or learn!) C++ to use it. For me, openFrameworks is what finally made me force myself to learn C++.

openFrameworks is free, really free, and you can get it by signing up at openframeworks.cc. Actually, you don’t have to sign up either, you can just go straight to openframeworks.cc/about - but you really should sign up to the list.

You will need a C++ IDE. You can use Code::Blocks to build your applications, whether you’re on Windows, Mac or Linux. It is free, too! Or you can use XCode (free, on a Mac) or Visual C++ (on Windows, comes in a free version called “Express”) if you prefer.

openFrameworks vs Processing

• Processing is based on Java, openFrameworks is based on C++.
• Processing is friendlier and easier to use. OpenFrameworks applications are faster.
• Processing comes with its own IDE that you can code directly in, for openFrameworks you’ll need to install a separate C++ IDE. However, the Processing IDE is pretty crappy and you’re better off installing a proper Java IDE such as Eclipse if you want to do some real work.
• Processing builds to desktop applications and web applets, openFrameworks only to desktop applications.
• Both are cross-platform (Mac, Windows, Linux)
• Both are free.
• Both have an active community that share code and will help you on the forums.
• Both require coding skills.

Recommendations: if you are a total programming newbie and want to try some stuff or to learn to program, I recommend you to start with Processing. If you just want to do some graphic stuff that you want to put online, Processing will do just fine (or consider using Flash). If you already know C++, consider going for openFrameworks. If you want or need really fast applications, you should know that Processing is no way near as fast as openFrameworks.

>> collectiveexperiments.com/ofsyjunta

>> detroitstockholm.com

Stockholm has been blessed with its own openFrameworks Knitting Circle. If you’re wondering why I’m talking about a knitting circle at at new media blog, it’s because this is not really a knitting circle. The craft here is hacking, not knitting. The material is code and electronics, not textiles, and the tool is primarily openFrameworks, the C-based framwork for new media artists and other… well, creative engineers.

The first oF Syjunta is at Doberman in Münchenbryggeriet, Oct 30 2008.

>> openFrameworks for the tool (and openframeworks.cc/download for the download)

>> oF Syjunta for the event

So, the site is back, but crippled. I hope to fix it. So stay tuned.

I’ve been working on the Fringe.nu site for a while, transforming the old site into a Wordpress-driven site. Tonight we flicked the switch and put it online. Go and have a look (and tell me if you find stuff that’s broken…). It’s at http://fringe.nu, just like before.

The good people of Dånk! are organizing the first Dorkbot Gothenburg event. It starts in about 30 minutes, so chances are that if you’re reading about it here it’s too late. All I know is that Japanese artist Kanta Horio will be there.

If you are not familiar with Dorkbot, I think the tagline “people doing strange things with electricity” really says it all. It’s great to see that it’s now running in Gothenburg too. Dorkbot STHLM has not been very busy lately, but fortunately we have Fringe… where, as it happens, Kanta Horio will also show up, as well as Alex Berman (aka Nim) from Dånk!

Out there:

• Dånk! [daonk.org]
• Dorkbot [dorkbot.org]
• Fringe [fringe.nu]
• Kanta Horio [media.t-kougei.ac.jp/~horio/]
• Alex Berman / Nim [timebend.net] [myspace.com/niminalism] [nimations.com]

A tool for exploring extrasensory perception

Interactive installation by Ulrika Sparre (2007). Produced at the Interactive Institute with Sparre as Artist in Residence. Programming and interface design by Fredrik Bridell.

Mental Radio contains an archive of drawings. The viewer is invited to try to guess the current drawing, hidden from view, and try to make a similar drawing.

The Mental Radio is inspired by experiments carried out by parapsychologists to explore the existence of extrasensory perception (ESP), in particular the type of experiment known as Ganzfeld (which is not a name, it means “entire field” in German). In such tests, two persons - one sender and one receiver, in separate rooms - try to transfer something telepathically. The receiver wears halves of ping-pong balls over the eyes and headphones with pink noise, to block out the audiovisual senses. The receiver typically watches a randomly selected video and tries to “send” what he or she sees, e.g. by talking out loud while watching it. Afterwards, the receiver gets to see a number of possible matches and is asked to say which one he or she thinks is the one the sender saw.

Another precursor is the series of experiments carried out by Upton Sinclair and his wife Mary, where she would attempt to copy drawings using her telepathic abilities. In this case the receiver is not presented with a range of options to choose from but is asked to draw her impressions directly, and whether or not the copy matches the original is a judgment call.

In this piece, artist Ulrika Sparre has loaded a computer with a number of monochrome drawings. (So there is no “sender”, which arguably makes this a case of testing for clairvoyance or remote viewing rather than telepathy). The user walks up to installation, and puts a pen to a wacom graphics tablet. At the touch, a secondary screen lights up and displays one of the original drawings. However, the drawing is hidden behind a plate, so there really is no way of knowing what it displays (at least not using conventional senses). The user tries to to “receive” the drawing and paint a copy of it using the wacom tablet. When the user is done she presses a key on the tablet, after which the screen displays both images (the original and what the user drew) side by side for better comparison. All the images that the users draw are saved on disk along with log files of when they were made and to which original, so it is possible to go back and examine the similarities later on.

I had no part in the artistic aspects of this piece, but I did do all the programming and figuring out of how to design for a system using a wacom pad as the only input. The system uses a wacom tablet, a PC and two screens (one for displaying the original drawings, hidden from view, and one for the drawing). It does not use a mouse and keyboard, only the wacom tablet and the function keys that are on the tablet. There is also a special type of wacom pen that works as a real ink pen, so you can put a regular paper on top of wacom pad and just draw. The sketching software is made to match this behavior, and tries to have the look and feel of drawing with an ink pen on a white sheet of paper. The “interface” is very minimalistic - really just a blank, white fullscreen interface, except for a status line on top that hints at what you are supposed to do next. There is no undo, just like in real life.

The system as such does not make any judgment as to how similar the copy is to the original - this is one of those things that machines really are quite incapable of, at least at present. Sure, we could have done some sort of image comparison, but what’s interesting is the semantic similarity, not the visual.

The software is a Java application that uses JTablet for interfacing with the wacom tablet and Processing for drawing the graphics and saving the files to disk. There is also a pink noise generator, using pd. If anybody is interested in the software, e-mail me.

See also

• ulrikasparre.com, artist’s home page
• Ganzfeld experiment at Wikipedia
• Mental Radio (Studies in Consciousness) by Upton Sinclair at Amazon
• Processing.org
• JTablet
• wacom, makers of the wacom tablets. We’re using an Intuous3.

Note: This is aimed at a reader already familiar with WordPress - if you’re not, begin by reading the instructions for the “5 minute installation“.

First of all, the web10 SQL database does work, you don’t need to do anything except “activate” it (in the control panel). You can’t create a new database, so don’t bother trying. (You can rename it however, although I haven’t tried this.)

In the WordPress config file (wp-config.php) you will need to set the DB_HOST to db.yoursite.com. (The “99% chance you won’t need to change this value” does not apply…). The DB_NAME is the same as DB_USER, and it should be your web10 login. If you don’t change it, the DB_PASSWORD is your usual web10 password.

OK, that should be it - just upload and run the installation (wp-admin/installation.php). right? Well, at least to me, this would not work at all with Wordpress 2.5. I got an ugly error message saying “Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate xxxxx bytes)”

As any true geek will instantly see, 8388608 bytes is 8*1024*1024, colloquially known as “8 MB”. This is not really a problem with your WordPress installation as such, it’s just that the web server has been set up to limit the amount of memory available to PHP to 8 MB. (Why? Because they’re cheap, that’s why!) It appears that 8 MB is not enough to run the Wordpress 2.5 installation, even though Wordpress.org fails to mention this in the “minimal requirements“. After finding some info about this at techtracer and trying the “ini_set(’memory_limit’,'16M’);” hack to no avail, I studied the fine print and found out that web10 will charge you extra for 16 MB.

At this point I decided to give up for now, and install Wordpress 2.3.3 from the Wordpress release archive. And 5 minutes later, the blog was up.

Update: Two things. First, the 2.3 installation did not work quite as well as I thought. The TinyMCE editor wouldn’t work - no buttons would show up at all - and possibly other things as well. I decided to cave in and buy the 16M upgrade, but much to my surprise web10 gave it to me to for free! I dropped all the tables, deleted the old installation, uploaded the 2.5 distribution, and with the new 16 MB PHP memory_limit I could run the Wordpress 2.5 installation in even less than 5 minutes. As far as I can tell right now it’s working ok.

In case you’re wondering, I’m not talking about this WordPress installation, which I have yet to upgrade, but another blog that is not really official yet.