- 27 March:
Archive for the ‘Baltan Tracker’ Category
Motion tracking workshop at the BKKC
| 21/10/2010 10:00 to 16:00 |
(In Dutch only)
Workshop Motiontracking in de kunst i.s.m. Baltan Laboratories
Locatie: bkkc
Datum: do 21 okt, 10.00 tot 16.00
Kunstenaar Geert Mul en programmeur Erik Overmeire ontwikkelden de Baltan Tracker, een hardware / software combinatie voor het opvolgen van bewegingen van mensen in een ruimte. Normaal gesproken wordt dit soort van ‘motion tracking’ gedaan met behulp van normale of bijna-infrarood camera’s. Dit kan problematisch zijn omdat elke vorm van inkomend licht of elk mogelijk object foutief gelezen kan worden als zijnde een ‘persoon’. De Baltan Tracker maakt gebruik van een thermografische camera, die een groot deel van deze licht-gerelatteerde misinterpretaties kan voorkomen doordat hij warmte-gevoelig is. In feite ziet hij zelfs helemaal geen ‘licht’, enkel infrarode straling (warmte). Momenteel maakt een opstelling met de thermocamera deel uit van de expositie DIGITAAL die nog t/m 24 oktober te zien is bij het BKKC.
Erik Overmeire zal een workshop geven op 21 oktober waarbij de Baltan Tracker als startpunt dient voor het verkennen van het gebruik en de mogelijkheden van ‘motion tracking’ voor kunstenaars. We zullen beginnen met een demo in de tentoonstelling bij de BKKC, waarin we de deelnemers de werking van de thermocamera en de Baltan tracker laten zien. Ook zullen we de voordelen van het gebruik van thermocamera’s en infraroodcamera’s bespreken.
Nadien zal Eric uitleg geven bij de basisonderdelen waaruit elke motion tracker is opgebouwd en bij de max/msp library die de deelnemers zullen hanteren. Dan zal hij de deelnemers uitnodigen om een eenvoudig werk te maken, gebruikmakend van motion tracking tools en van de kennis die tijdens de workshop werd gedeeld.
Deelnemers moeten voor deze workshop een eigen laptop meebrengen. Enige ervaring met Max/MSP is een plus maar geen vereiste.
Meer over de Baltan Tracker: http://www.baltanlaboratories.org/?p=1218
Aanmelden via: s.lugthart[at]bkkc.nl (deadline do 14 okt).
Er is plaats voor een beperkt aantal deelnemers, dus wacht niet te lang met aanmelden!
www.bkkc.nl
Interview with Geert Mul
By Ties van de Werff
Translated from Dutch by Jane Hardjono
“Echolocation”, interactive installation, Geert Mul, 2009, Roombeek, Enschede.
Geert Mul is one of the four artists working on research projects at BALTAN Laboratories under the umbrella of Poème Numérique. Mul started his career back in the 90s as a VJ in Rotterdam, which later led him towards interactive video and audio works within different contexts. He has exhibited in the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, India, China, Japan and South Africa. As a member of the artistic staff at BALTAN, Geert Mul has exciting ideas about Poème Numérique, the synthesis between art and science, the implications of new media for the arts, and the future of BALTAN. An interview with one of BALTAN’s artistic thinkers.
Database as spirit of the times
During my interview with Lucas van der Velden (Telcosystems) it became quite clear that Poème Numérique is completely different to its precursor, Poème Electronique. For the artists at BALTAN, it’s more about the synthesis between different disciplines. Geert Mul: “The idea of interdisciplinarity and the connection of architecture with other disciplines is nothing new. The cathedral is an example of a multidisciplinary building and acoustic design. Poème Numérique is about a possible integration of architecture, imagery and sound. Poème Numérique is literally the starting point, meaning we are leaving it behind. But we are trying to pull the concept into the now, and into the future.” Our current era, according to Geert Mul, is defined through digital media that form a fundamental and structural watershed with everything that has come before: “To me, it’s all to do with the digital database, a tool through which real-time information can be ordered and re-ordered. A library is a wonderful database, but that is where information is always ordered physically, in a space. A digital database does not possess intrinsic ordering; a digital database can be randomly ordered and re-ordered within milliseconds. That to me is the most elementary quality that separates new media from old media.” (more…)
BALTAN Session on custom tools
| 10/12/2009 17:00 to 19:00 |
On Thursday, December 10th, from 17:00-19:00, BALTAN Laboratories invites you to the last BALTAN Session of the year, which will focus on custom-designed technologies and tools developed as part of artistic research projects. In addition to a festive drink, the evening will feature presentations and demos by artists Gert-Jan Prins and Bas van Koolwijk, who will present their newly released SYNCHRONATOR device; and Erik Overmeire, who has been working with Geert Mul on developing the BALTAN Tracker here at the lab.
BALTAN Tracker Research Update
Concept: Geert Mul
Programmer: Erik Overmeire
Thermographic motion-tracking system
In my work I started to use a Thermographic camera for motion-tracking instead of a normal camera because the thermographic camera ‘sees’ only heat and no light. This filters out a lot of computer vision misinterpretations that occur when working with a normal camera, where shadows or objects can be mistaken for persons.
September 2009:
Erik Overmeire and myself installed a test set-up at BALTAN Laboratories. I’m using a FLIR VSR-6 camera. One of the reasons is that this camera has a nice wide-angle lens that is often useful. Another reason is that the camera can be used outdoors. We are using Max-MSP both to control the camera, and for motion-tracking. As for the computer, we bought a Pear-C, a mac-clone, basically a PC with OSX running on it. I have to feed the analogue signal into the computer and I’m using an ADVC-55 for that. The results stemming from the development of the BaltanTracker will not only be the tracker itself but also a library of abstractions that could assist in making motion tracking a lot easier for artists working with Max/MSP. (more…)
A View on Looking – report from BALTAN goes NATLAB 2
On April 24, 2009, BALTAN hosted the second in its BALTAN goes NATLAB series at the former Philips NatLab at Strijp-S in Eindhoven. Curated and moderated by artist Geert Mul, the focus of this session was on the philosophy of perception and how artificial intelligence and robotics can lead to a deeper understanding of human behaviour itself. We invited 3 speakers to present very different perspectives on the topic.
The first speaker was Thom Warmerdam from Philips Applied Technologies who gave a presentation of the artificial eye that he is developing. His presentation also shed a light on how the brain constructs an image.
He also brought along the robotic eye (currently inhabiting a stuffed bear) to demonstrate his current research.
More excerpts from Thom’s presentation: (more…)