Posted Wednesday, 7 December 2011

First Working Day

Yesterday was our first day in the space (Nutrecht). It's a huge empty warehouse building with a number of large empty spaces. When we arrived several other installations were in the process of being set up.

It's very cold, and everyone is walking around with coats and scarves on. Music and random sounds keep kicking out from around the warehouse.

An odd device in the corridor

I met the other collaborators first thing at the airport to come out here (most for the first time). Gareth Griffiths is organising and managing the team. Mike Wilson is preparing 3D meshes and objects to make up the scene, and Joseph Mounsey is working on the visualisation and dynamics of the augmented scene.

Tom Parslow is writing software to collect data we are interested in from the Kinects, format it and send over the network. Hayden Anyasi is designing a VVVV patch to handle the 3D scene and feed in the Kinect data, and to push out scene-related data across the network for use in the sound environment.

Co-working in a cold warehouse

Barney Thorn is working on sound design, writing tracks which can be stretched and morphed by interaction with the Kinects. Alex Hosford and I are working on a Max/MSP environment to listen for Kinect data and use it to stretch, morph and treat Barney's sounds.

So we're all divided into little working groups, huddled around a small desk in a large warehouse. We all had about 1 hour's sleep the previous night, due to an early flight / train out to Utrecht from London.

The space already has some installations... and a bicycle

We persevered and by the end of the night we had a made a good start. There is a proof-of-concept-style basic interaction running from the first Kinect box through to the sound environment. Barney has written one and a half music tracks! The 3D visuals are started but weren't plugged in yet. A good start.