A little movie to show you another animation that responds to the music as well as following something…
This is the visualisation I was talking about in the post ‘Thoughts on two sources’. I’ve had a better look at the program now and it seems that the warping doesn’t actually attract the colour from one point to another, but start from a point and then smudge it in different directions. This means I can’t easily do the thing I was thinking of doing, with the colour going from one dancer to another. I’m sure it could be done, but not as easily as I had anticipated. Shame.
I’d like to make the maxMSP patch I am usig in this little movie available to download but wordpress doesn’t support the file format.
Fran's Blog 
Hi!
This looks good. I think it’s important to keep the reaction to the music minimal, otherwise the whole thing could end up looking too busy. But something reasonably subtle like this should look good – also like the black background, although not sure that’d be possible in the real dancing situation.
I still also think it might be good to try and catch the accents of the dancers (e.g. voleo, gancho, piernazo) – question is how to do it? If the tracking program can distinguish between colours, dancers could wear something bright/registerable on the soles of their feet, and program could respond according to how long this colour is present for. For a quick gancho, colour appears and disappears quickly, which could be linked to a certain response in the projected image.
I don’t know much about the limitations of the technology, but perhaps this would be possible. Question is whether it’s possible using the add-ins available. If it’s not, perhaps a different kind of sensor could be used to capture this kind of movement?
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Sorry, just had another idea. Perhaps too complicated…
If you’re filming from above, a rapid movement could be registered in another way. For example, your program can tell where the dancers are, so it could also tell how quickly they are moving according to how quickly their position changes. You know, from year 8 science class – velocity = distance/time. So, could you use this ‘speed’ variable to trigger changes in the projection?
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I agree, it has to be subtle, it´s supposed to be enhancing the performance, illustrating it in some way not distracting attention from the dancers completely.
I have to change the black, we had problems when we tried to project dark colours last time because it confused the tracking. I tried to change the background to white but couldn´t figure out how to do it… does anyone who might be reading this know how to do it in MaxMSP? it´s a jit.window I think, I don´t have it in front of me.
I know what you want me to try and do, and I think it´s a great idea, but I don´t think the tracking is sensitive enough to pick up different colours. I will look at it but I´m not hopeful, if the background is not completely plain it can´t even track one colour, and it´s quite dark with only the light from the projector so it would need to be very bright, possibly reflective material… maybe it would be able to see a coloured led… it would be possible to stick one under a high heeled shoe I guess, with a battery… I need to experiment.
I did think about using an infra red camera as the tracking device, which apparently can distiguish between skin and material quite well, haven´t tried it yet.
I also thought about using different sensors (tilt, pressure, ultrasound) but I don´t think there is anything that doesn´t cost a fortune that is wireless. I don´t think I can ask the dancers to dance with cables lying around the floor.
I also had the idea about using speed as a trigger. I asked Liam about it and he said MaxMSP isn´t very good with time, but I haven´t looked into it any further yet… It does seem like it should be possible.
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