Can’t believe how fast this has al gone… I’m actually finishing up my master year. If everything goes according to plan, I will be a master in audiovisual arts next week!
I will present my thesis and my findings on the 18th of july in front of internal and external judges. If you would like to read a summary, or the full document, you can check out this post at my portfolio.
I put together a little movie that explains my prototype in short. Also the first draft of the presentation I’m planning to give is included, all constructive criticism is welcome.
I’m not really sure what’s up next. I’m planning to continue my research, and eventually become a teacher. The road will be bumpy and with a lot of hurdles, but I’m eager to explore what lies around the bend…
Download the abstract and/or full document here
a couple of weeks ago I completed an abstract describing the thesis project I’m doing.
You can read it here to get a good grasp of what I’m currently doing.
Jan likes to snoezel . The Multi-sensory room is a place where he can retreat. Here, he’s in charge. He decides what he wants to do, when he wants to do it and when he would like to stop. What makes the experience all the more pleasurable for him is that the room is so adjusted that his limitations don’t interfere with either his pleasure or his opportunity to relax.
To provide the snoezelaar with more autonomy and to enrich the Multi-sensory experience, I’m adding an invisible technological layer to the Multi-sensory room. This way a person with limitations can also enjoy the benefits technology has to offer, without having to learn new competences or skills.
In addition to the knowledge acquired doing desk research and talking to experts, I want to apply the insights provided by different media and orthopedagogic theories to observe and interpret the behaviour of snoezelaars in interaction with an early prototype. I will document these findings and use them to assemble a final prototype that illustrates my view that the Multi-sensory room of tomorrow can provide a richer snoezel experience.
Within the new Multi-sensory room the snoezelaar interacts intuitively with a known and trusted environment that possesses the necessary intelligence to interpret behaviour and is able to respond accordingly along with the supervisor.
My aim is to grow as a researcher throughout this process and to contribute in this way to bridging the gap between audiovisual arts and a domain of experiency with a target audience that is often overlooked.
During the module Play I was part of the team which developped the serious game called “skindeep”. I was in charge of the character design and animation.
I’m not going to go into detail explaining the project, because Thomas Lammers put together a nice little video demonstrating what the skindeep project was all about.
Skindeep teaches the students dull theoretical biology
by the use of physical interaction. The student discovers in a
playful way, how skin is composed.
An assignment of mastermodule Play @ C-MD Genk.
a litte video I put together demonstrating the installation we put together in the open module which I talked about here.
enjoy
Just a small update showing the graphical evolution of the interface the mentor will be using to steer the multi-sensory-room. A more thorough explanation of how the interface will work will follow later on.
Tomorrow we are rounding up the final setup of the open module. Open module is an initiative of the media and design academy Genk to stimulate cross disciplinary projects and teams. I decided to go and follow the module of Video/Tv/Movie.
The theme we had to stick with was “borderline”. This could be interpreted freely. We translated this to the movie/television world by deciding to work with the problematic of privacy. After the brainstorm sessions, 3 main ideas were ready to be developed. 1 consisted of building a large box where people would be filmed. This image would then be projected inside a little box somewhere else giving the impression that these people are small ants in a box! The second idea was to create a little immersive play where you would have to navigate through a space, guided only by images of security cameras. The third and final idea was to make (automatic) pictures of unsuspecting people and then projecting these onto a screen, thus making them aware they are watched everywhere.
I decided to jump in with both feet and developed the motion-trigger-camera device. a movie and some explanation about the inner workings of this setup can be found here.
In practice this idea turned out to be not so strong, so we went with the other 2 ideas and divided into two groups. I choose to work with the group of the virtual reality play.
head mounted display
I searched and found a cheap solution for a head-mounted-display. I bought 2 glasses from Spygear, which I modded to be used with composite connection using this tutorial. The outcome can be seen on some pictures here:
But since another member of our team was planning to buy a high end display anyway, he purchased a myvu display, which we are using now.
Setting up a multi-camera system
For setting up a multi-camera system I, the multi-media nerd I am, started coding a rather “complicated” system for switching webcams in processing. After making too much compromises in quality, I finally gave up.
Because I was in a video module we were thaught how to set up an analog multi-camera setup. Rather cool to do, learned a lot! You can see somse pictures of us setting up and testing out.
As a final note I would like to add that this setup will be shown during an exibition at the media and design academy, Genk. More info about where and when will be posted here.
To further complete my of creating an interactive multi sensory room, I had to select the proper interface for the instructor to use. The best case scenario would be that it is a small, powerful laptop computer with finger touchscreen ability and an extensive battery life. But because a student doesn’t make a lot of money, I had to compromise. Here’s a summary of my line of thought:
requirements:
- able to run processing
- able to interface with an arduino board (usb host or bluetooth connection needed)
- has to have a finger enabled touch screen (a stylus is a hassle to use in this scenario)
- has to have at least a couple of hours battery life
options:
a tablet pc
the tablet pc seemed to cover all my needs pretty well. So I set out to buy me a 2nd HP TC4200. Although it is a nice laptop, I quickly discovered some flaws concerning the way I was going to implement this device in my setup:
- short battery life (when CPU was stressed, only half an hour)
- touchscreen only works with special stylus
- not very mobile (heavy, large)
- for it’s size, weight and low battery life, it had limited CPU and RAM power (1.2GHZ, 1GIG)
A PDA
Second option consisted of using a PDA to remotely control a tucked away computer
advantages:
- small, leightweight
- long battery life (almost a day)
- power of a full pc, in your hand (remote control)
- finger enabled touchscreen
disadvantages
- a hassle to set up the remote control
- remote control worked slow
A UMPC
how about combining the advantages of a PC/laptop with the handheld abilities of a PDA? At first I didn’t even know this excisted, but now I’m the proud owner of a Wibrain. This is a very small PC that fits in your hand!
advantages:
- windows environment
- USB host on board
- Wifi enabled
- Bluetooth enabled
- finger enabled touch screen
- 2.5 hour battery life when stressed
- small, lightweight
disadvantages
- limited CPU, RAM and graphics performance (1.2GHZ, 1GIG ram)
Movie of the tablet and pictures of the wibrain below
Today I did a presentation concerning my master project at the media and design academy in Genk.
what have I done so far?
- Read 3 books, wrote 3 papers (almost):
- Remediation
currently a draft on the interfaceles computer, the “Wunderkammer”, remediation of the amusement park and ubiquitous computing - in-com-clusie
currently a draft on digital inclusion, multi-sensory rooms (MSR) and personal, social and emotional development, MSR and learning. - the internet of things / new ecology of things
currenlty a paper covering the concepst of the internet of things, the new ecology of things and ubiquitous computing linked with the concept of the multi-sensory room
- Did a brainstormsession
- Started working with VZW de regenboog in Genk
- received 2 coaching sessions
- changed my direction
- made a map of the multi-sensory room
- mapped out the interactive multi-sensory-room
- Made a prototype (video coming soon)
Where am I headed?
- next book to read: new media, a critical introduction
- going to do an expert interview with someone who build MSR-modules
- Create a module on my own using the waterbed and interactive projection
check out my presentation (in Dutch, though)
Video of the prototype and (dirty) source code will be posted later this week.
Today I tested a setup for an installation. It consitst of a light beam, which shines onto a LDR light sensor that is monitored by an Arduino microcontroller. When the light beam is broken, the arduino sends a message to the com port. Gobetwino monitors the com port and sends a command to the photo camera using an evaluation version of DSLR remote pro
video below
When stumbeling across the internet I noticed this project . It uses a regular LED as a light-sensore. I went to explore the possibility to do this with an arduino microcontroller, because I’ve recently bought one. I came across this script at the arduino playground, which I morfed into this code.
video below: