installation

Lighthouse

Monday, January 30th, 2012

In a collaboration of New American Public Art and goodgood, I designed, built, and installed an interactive public art piece on the Rose Kennedy Greenway alongside Karen, Ben, Dan, Mattie, and Namita.

The piece consists of three analog projectors, a sculptural housing, and an LED video animation. The opening reception was on January 12th, 2012, and featured modern dancer Yuka Takahashi.

We took the opportunity to introduce a work of interactivity to a public space in Boston, exploring themes of play and creativity, while unifying the work with the goals of the Greenway and the Boston Harbor Islands.


Photos by Matthew Shanley.

Support for the materials for the work was provided by the Rose Kennedy Greenway. The Harbor Islands graciously provided the pavilion and the LED screens, which were integrated with the assistance of Boston Cyberarts and the Pavilion.

The work shows from January 2012 to mid March 2012, and is a block from the Aquarium T stop.

See associated posts with Lighthouse, including coverage by the Boston Dig, and a press release.

Posted on January 30th, 2012 under Blog, Projects. Tags: , , , , , , ,

Public Art Opening: Lighthouse on the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway

Sunday, January 8th, 2012

For the last few months I have designed and built a public art piece as a collaboration between goodgood and New American Public Art.  The opening will be this Thursday from 6-8pm at the location of the piece.  It’s by the Aquarium T stop.  The piece is an accomplishment in the direction of introducing interactive art experiences in the public space.

Press Release: 

LIGHTHOUSE : An interactive analogue projection installation.

goodgood Design in collaboration with New American Public Art presents LIGHTHOUSE, located at the Boston Harbor Island Alliance pavilion on the Rose Kennedy Greenway.

The opening ceremony begins at 6pm on Thursday, January 12th. It will include a brief presentations by the artists and by Nancy Brennan, Executive Director of the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, as well as a 15 minute dance performance by Yuka Takahashi that showcases the interactive quality of the piece. Sel de la Terre will be serving free warm beverages. Everyone is invited to an after party at Waterline Bar in the Marriott-Long Wharf hotel.

The installation uses three overlapping analogue projections to create a simple interactive light scape. The work’s form and materials echo the flow of the existing architecture and allude to old canvas ship sales and whale bones. These forms are reflected in the projected images as well as the generative animations shown on the 2 large video screens.

goodgood is a design studio based in Boston’s Fort Point. They specialize in custom design solutions for businesses and the private sector. With a strong focus on community, public art is also a passion for the goodgood team. They have collaborated with the Rose Kennedy Greenway in past years.

New American Public Art is a collaborative of artists, programers, engineers and community groups with the goal of developing interactive, responsive, and beautiful public art.

Posted on January 8th, 2012 under Blog. Tags: , , , , , , ,

wow, phonegap, wow

Friday, November 18th, 2011

The last few days I started to get back into droid coding, and its definitely a new kind of process for me.  Months ago I looked at phonegap, and thought I’d now give it a try for the Android.  I’m kind of amazed.  After just maybe 10 minutes of a couple quick tutorials I’ve already got a couple app examples installed and working: see the basic tutorial here, and a slightly more in depth one here.  And the best part is when you look at how the code is written, its all in the /assets/www folder as html, css and javascript. So its far more readable to me than looking at Android code, and that’s pretty exciting.

Here’s a snapshot from the second tutorial:

And then you can check under main.js to see whats going on.

The accelerometer:

function updateAcceleration(a) {

document.getElementById(‘x’).innerHTML = roundNumber(a.x);

document.getElementById(‘y’).innerHTML = roundNumber(a.y);

document.getElementById(‘z’).innerHTML = roundNumber(a.z);

}

var toggleAccel = function() {

if (accelerationWatch !== null) {

navigator.accelerometer.clearWatch(accelerationWatch);

updateAcceleration({

x : “”,

y : “”,

z : “”

});

accelerationWatch = null;

} else {

var options = {};

options.frequency = 1000;

accelerationWatch = navigator.accelerometer.watchAcceleration(

updateAcceleration, function(ex) {

alert(“accel fail (” + ex.name + “: ” + ex.message + “)”);

}, options);

}

};

 

 

and vibration:

var vibrate = function() {

navigator.notification.vibrate(0);

};

 

App development just got a whole lot easier.  Well- for some apps, this is definitely not for all apps.  Like I imagine the openCV stuff wouldn’t work, but there’s still a lot to play around with here.  Check out the docs to see what they’ve covered.

edit: Tried out the accelerometer examples here in the docs and they crashed when I moved my phone.  Found some posts about others having similar issues.

Posted on November 18th, 2011 under Blog. Tags: , , , ,

computer vision on the android: getting started with opencv-android

Sunday, November 6th, 2011

I had the urge to get some computer vision analysis going on my droid.  Something simple, something done before, like a live image coming through my camera with some face detection or edge detection. Along the installation process I found a few difficulties, and here I’ll outline what worked for me to hopefully save you some time.  I’m installing on Mac OS 10.6.8.

A quick aside

But before we start, you might ask:

When would using computer vision be helpful?  Just trying to get a context for its utility.

Well, here is why I’m excited about it:

-games! I want to try and make some games using the real time feed from the camera.  There have been a few, but not enough that are fun to convince me the market is saturated.

-augmented reality! I’m not really into many of the augmented reality apps I’ve seen… maybe knowing some more CV stuff could lead to some insights in that direction.

-science! People are doing analysis of facial expressions for emotions, or even for health diagnostics.  Tools to facilitate quantitative analysis of behavior can be made more mobile, and more cheaply.

-cameras of the future! I crashed the media lab sponsor week a couple weeks back. When I was wandering by the Camera Culture group, one of the researchers mentioned to me that for the most part the camera is pretty similar to what it was 40 years ago- despite significant advances in technology.  That group explores the potential of newer technologies for cameras.  Mobile 3D reconstruction has emerged in the last year for mobile devices- and I think there is much more we can do.

Ok, back to getting it installed

First, there is this awesome post that will get you started even if you have never done any android development.  As recommended, I used the Tegra downloads to get up and running fast- it’ll get you the SDK and eclipse and whatever else you need.

Then you need to get opencv-android, its basically hooking up all the power of opencv with android, by the folks at willowgarage.  The tutorial recommends you to download it from here, but when I did, I got the following issue when I had everything in Eclipse:

ERROR: resource directory <path-to-opencv-android>\OpenCV-2.3.1\modules\java\android\res’
does not exist

[Same error posted on the boards]

After trying several things in Eclipse and wondering what was going on, I found this post on the boards recommending to build from the trunk.  On this page you can find installation instructions for the trunk.

For me it didn’t work the first time.  You may have some error about ‘install_name_tool’, and fortunately thats covered in the Troubleshooting part right after the Linux and Mac OS build instructions. There may be a couple other issues that come up.

After searching for ‘install_name_tool’ (as the troubleshooting describes) you may find it elsewhere.  I found it in:

/Developer/usr/bin/install_name_tool

The CMake file ‘CMakeFindBinUtils.cmake’ I had to edit was not in /opt/local/share/… , and instead was in

/usr/local/Cellar/cmake/2.8.4/share/cmake/Modules/CMakeFindBinUtils.cmake

since I installed with Homebrew.

After I made those minor changes, the build worked.  Point to the OpenCV library in this build folder when you are in Eclipse, hit F5 to refresh the library, and things should load up correctly (this will make sense when you read through the tutorial).

I loaded the projects straight onto the phone by this process. Its kind of exciting when it first works. My favorite is the puzzle example.  Looking forward to diving into the code and making some kooky real time CV toys.  Maybe even a synth! (hah-I just came back from music hack day).

 

 

Posted on November 6th, 2011 under Blog. Tags: , , , ,

Getting a couchapp up and running on a mac 10.5.8

Thursday, July 14th, 2011

So Max sent me this sweet video he made on getting started with couchapps.  All the fun details are there to download what from where.  But as I followed the commands to push an app I got an error:

kawandeep-virdees-macbook:superblog5000 kawandeepvirdee$ couchapp push app.js http://localhost:5984/superblog
Preparing.

crypto.js:110
return new Hash(hash);
^
TypeError: undefined is not a function
at CALL_NON_FUNCTION_AS_CONSTRUCTOR (native)
at Object.createHash (crypto.js:110:10)
at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/couchapp/main.js:103:32
at [object Object].<anonymous> (fs.js:107:5)
at [object Object].emit (events.js:62:17)
at afterRead (fs.js:970:12)
at wrapper (fs.js:245:17)

Okay. What is this? crypto.js? I imagine this could be due to me running OS 10.5 instead of 10.6.  So lets go back through the chain of events. First I installed CouchDB.  I know thats working fine.  Here’s a link to a build that will work just great for OS 10.5.8.

Second I installed Node, then I installed node.couchapp.js, and then npm.  With Node I had the following issue:

Waf: Leaving directory `/Users/kawandeepvirdee/Documents/node/build’
Build failed:  -> task failed (err #1):
{task: cxx node_crypto.cc -> node_crypto_5.o}

So I google around and found that

./configure –without-ssl

Does the trick.  But thats exactly what later caused the issue with pushing the couchapp.  I thought it could be npm, so I downloaded it from github

git clone https://github.com/isaacs/npm.git

instead of doing the one line install which I used before.

With npm I got some weird response like

shasum crypto binding not found. Cannot verify shasum.

I found later that this was due to no openssl.  The workaroundI found online

sudo node ./cli.js

didn’t work either. Same issue.

I installed openssl and still had the issues, even with

./configure –openssl-includes=<path to ssl>/include  –openssl-libpath=<path to ssl>/lib

After trying tons of other things, I remembered perhaps it could be a MacPorts issue.   I installed from Homebrew instead of MacPorts

brew install openssl

Found the location of that and included it in the ./configure file for Node

./configure –openssl-includes=/<brew path>/openssl/0.9.8r/include  –openssl-libpath=/<brew path>/openssl/0.9.8r/lib

Boom. Installed. Then went to npm, tried that install again and it worked, no ‘shasum’ stuff.  And then node.couchapp.js worked fine, no crypto issues.

You can’t imagine how excited I was when I finally saw

kawandeep-virdees-macbook:superblog5000 kawandeepvirdee$ couchapp push app.js http://localhost:5984/superblog
Preparing.
Serializing.
PUT http://localhost:5984/superblog/_design/superblog
Finished push. 1-8c15527a3cdaff96951c1a604ff14c49

So thats it! Things are working smoothly now.  Why did I blog about it?  Because I found only bits and pieces of things, but what I found in blogs was immensely useful, just by copy and pasting my error prints.  Because there was no single post that solved the issue for me, I thought I’d blog it.

Posted on July 14th, 2011 under Blog. Tags: , , , , , , ,

Cloak and Dagger release party

Wednesday, January 12th, 2011

Joey Asal and I have been given a pretty wide time slot to curate music for the Spirited magazine release party this Sunday.  The theme for this issue is cloak and dagger.  Like the last opening a few months ago, Joey and Amanda have created a sweet installation for the magazine, you can walk around and through.  At the same time people who are featured in the issue will be there, bringing the pages to life.

Posted on January 12th, 2011 under Blog. Tags: , , , , , , ,

PC//MM at Autumn Ahn Installation

Saturday, October 23rd, 2010


Autumn Ahn will have an installation at the Lilypad.  Joey and I (PC//MM) recorded a vocal-sampling-experimental-ambient piece with Autumn for the opening.  I really like the visceral energy her recent installations, so I’m pretty excited about this collaboration. Come check it out,  it will be a great time. Harpoon Brewery is sponsoring it, and there will be more music by DJ Human.

Opening Reception: Thursday, October 28, 2010 | 7-12am  (Event Page)
Lilypad Gallery | 1393 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA (http://bit.ly/9bAjd1)

Posted on October 23rd, 2010 under Uncategorized. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Photos: Spirited & Asal Installation

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

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Posted on October 19th, 2010 under Uncategorized. Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Spirited Magazine and Joey Asal Closing Reception/Party

Sunday, October 17th, 2010

Hey all, wanted to let you know of a closing reception tonight in the Fort Point area downtown. Art, photography, fashion and film from the new boston fashion+art culture magazine Spirited will be exhibited as well as the recent assemblage installation by artist Joey Asal and electronic composition by Kawandeep Virdee.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted on October 17th, 2010 under Uncategorized. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The guests did not…/a vision of…/to this river…

Saturday, April 17th, 2010

Full Title: the guests did not care anyway/ a vision of ultimate cunt and come/ to this river, to this song of a thousand voices


This three part electronic composition was created as a multi-speaker installation and interactive performance for Electronic and Computer Music in 2008.  The piece contains eight unique simultaneous tracks, and the following is a mix onto stereo left and right.

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Listen

With respect to content,  I wanted to make it a retrospective piece, as it was my final performance in university.  The title comes from quotes from three books that coincided with phases and experiences in my development while at school.  The first part is from The Fountainhead, the second is from Howl, and the third is from Siddharta.

The composition is made up of eight tracks to be played simultaneously from different sources.  Form wise, I wanted to make a piece of music that one could actively explore in a space.  I wanted people to wander through a room and hear something different wherever they are. This piece was created for eight speakers, which were placed around the Dorothy Betts theater in GWU, surrounding the audience.

Performance

It was the last performance of the evening and the audience was invited to get up and wander around.  From behind the stage metal was struck during the first part and a red light filled the auditorium.  In the second part, the lights turned blue and an acoustic guitar player sat among the audience seating.  Glowsticks were handed out in a previous performance during the night, and they glowed as audience members wanders the aisles, the stage, or the seats.  For the drum part a synthesizer was played live alongside the speakers. In the final part a group of audience members settled sitting facing each other in a circle in the center of the stage.

Thanks

I am very grateful to those who collaborated and provided support during the piece

Recorded Performers: Karinne’ Hovnanian, Kiran Sarabu, Roshini Mahtani, William Gibb

Live Acoustic Guitar: Jeff Lamoureux

Speakers, setup, and guidance: Steve Hilmy

This was performed on May 1st 2008 as the final piece in the 2008 Electronic and Computer Music Concert in the Dorothy Betts Marvin Theatre in Washington D.C.

Posted on April 17th, 2010 under guests_vision_river, Projects. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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