Digital Artifacts

This is an attempt at contour detection using a basic algorithm.




Basic contour detection with Processing.org from mistercrunch on Vimeo.


I simply look at each pixel and compare it with its 8 surrounding neighbors and sum the gray scale difference. From there a certain threshold is applied to decide whether to display the pixel or not.



I was expecting something a bit less noisy and more cartoonish but I love the results. Somehow it looks as though there's some image compression happening somewhere between my webcam and my pixel array.



This should work pretty good for the video installation I'm working on (projector + infrared webcam + infrared spotlight). See it at BaconWood in May: and hopefully at Burning Man 2010.

Shit I just realized that I never posted anything on this blog of mine about the Blink Buggy: our Burning Man art car. I designed and assembled most of the electronics and wrote the software for this project. This is definitely one the most interesting things I've worked on ever.

Here are a few of the best videos and pictures that have managed somehow to make their way back from Burning Man:






Pics:









Most of the pics and vids have not been very satisfying because camerasjust don't behave the way human eyes do. Anyhow, these are as good as it gets, thanks to Reid Spice for the pics!

I've been playing around with my webcam and the 2d/3d Java based IDE processing.org lately.

Here's what that looks like:


Webcam Distortion from mistercrunch on Vimeo.


What you see is basically a frame differencing algorithm with a palette animated color applied to it. I compare the current frame with the previous one, pixel per pixel and apply a color based on a cycling saturated color. The alpha of that color is based on how different the pixel is from the previous one. The leftover traces left behind the movement is there by applying a semi-transparent layer at every frame that makes previous drawings slowly disapear.

I am planning a night outdoor installation for BaconWood, an outdoor festival located in California a few weeks from now. I will use a video projector, a white screen, an infrared webcam and a infrared spotlight to create a trippy "mirror".

I modified my webcam for near infrared perception by removing the little infrared filter located in front of the sensor and by sliding in a little cut out from black negative to filter out the normal light. I'm looking into buying an infrared spotlight of some sort to stealth light the subjects which are most likely going to be dancing people or passerbys.