Jasonmcdermott » PhD

progress reporting

Jason — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:06:00 +0000

Lately I’ve been working my way through an academic requirement for all phd students at UTS, which involves submitting a progress reports on my work each and every semester. These reports are essentially a simple 4-page form but require an appended (also 4 page) report outlining what you set out to do, what you achieved and what you’ll be doing next semester. It’s a standard activity and from the outset fairly banal, however going through this again was quite nice given just how much has actually happened in the last few months.So, in light of this output of events I think it’s high time I gave a quick update on what’s what in the world of interactive research. The following notable things have happened in the last few months;Joanne Jakovich and I co-wrote a paper called Realtime Response on our research work in the Computational Environments architecture design studio and a small installation we designed called Filtration Fields. The paper was presented at the inaugural Seam: Spatial Phrases Symposium in Sydney during September, which marked a) the first paper I’d had the chance to work on and b) the first conference I’d had the opportunity to present at. These two facts meant that I was fairly anxious prior to the event and unsure as to how it would all play out, but the Seam crowd were very gracious and asked all the questions I didn’t anticipate. The feedback from Seam was most interesting, some of the more predominant questions were completely unrelated to the architectural implications (I believe) my work implies, however they did prompt a flurry of thoughts surrounding interesting digital-social issues such as data privacy and ethics. I also had the chance to meet the fascinating mind that is Josh Harle, who’s working on his own phd over at UNSW with Russell Lowe and Richard Goodwin.Next I was invited to collaborate on a paper with UTS design, architecture and innovation Professor Tom Barker, UTS post-doctoral researcher Hank Haeusler and a colleague of mine Frank Maguire, this time writing on the interface design research and issues surrounding the Janus project (titled Investigating Political and Demographic Factors in Crowd-Based Interfaces). This paper was written for the upcoming OzCHI conference taking place next week in Melbourne, and happily it was also accepted. I will be heading down to Melbourne to present this paper with Frank, so if you’re in Melbourne or attending the conference I look forward to seeing you down there! I’ll be attending the Tuesday workshop on street computing and presenting our paper on Friday.Following on the same paper writing theme, last week I was in contact with architecture graduate Ben Coorey and Anthony Burke, senior lecturer in the architecture faculty at UTS, to join in writing a paper on the 2008 Master of Digital Architecture master-class known as Street As Platform. The studio was run primarily by Dan Hill (of Arup and cityofsound.com renown), Anthony and Mitchell Whitelaw, who joined us from ANU in Canberra. Ben was one of the key students in the studio, so with the team complete we all attacked the paper from our particular perspectives. The paper has been submitted to the CAADRIA 2010 (The Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia) conference next April in Hong Kong, and focused on the issues surrounding the realtime street as an alternative design analysis model to GIS or agent-based modeling. This paper was a bit more short notice so I expect we’ll go through another round of edits to massage the text but for now it’s all done and dusted.All of these papers are either in the process of being indexed and published, or still in development, so I can’t put them on here, but if and when I can I will.In addition to these efforts at publishing research I’ve been involved with, I’ve also been trying to work on my actual phd! At this point that has amounted to lots of work and not as much written outcome, however I’m taking steps to change this ratio. Meanwhile I’ve been working quite hard on a number of fronts – some visual/interface/technologically related and others are more involved in demonstrating my prototype projects to whomsoever happens to be in the studio at any point. The Interactivation studio at UTS (run by my phd supervisor and where I spend most of my time) has been host to many guests lately and it has been a concerted effort to keep things running and demonstrable at any time. Some of my work has made it on to this site recently, but I do aim to upload more in the near future. Certainly there have been a number of interesting finds related to simplifying techniques (translate: doing things much better than we did previously!) and fulfilling discussions on where we see this research leading us in the future. All very good food for thought and I really should do more of my bit to share.So that’s the end of the academic progress reporting. The conclusion so far? Progress is good! I thought I’d done roughly about the amount I planned on doing, but my supervisor thought I’d done more – so far I’d say the going is good and I’ll let you know if that changes!One more thing – I’ve also recently had a major change in my work/study balance, but I’ll wait for another day to mention any more – it’s good news but good news can wait.

pixelTag Vimeoland

Jason — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 09:57:27 +0000

This is a video of the latest updates for the pixeltag project. So far I’ve had to be satisfied with screen grabs or photos from the interactivation studio, but I’ve taken the leap and made it safely into videoland – or should I say vimeoland.Enjoy!pixeltag v2.0 from Jason McDermott on Vimeo.

pixeltag widescreen

Jason — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 06:38:19 +0000

pixeltag widescreen, originally uploaded by jason.mcdermott.

Pixeltag Installed in the Interactivation studio, spanning over the full double-width projection space.

Pixeltag updated

Jason — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 06:24:35 +0000

Pixeltag updated, originally uploaded by jason.mcdermott.

This is a screenshot of the updated pixeltag project, as exhibited at World Bar on the 25th of last month.
I’m still working through some of the smaller bugs associated with the gravity module and wii remote connection – but overall I’m pretty pleased with how it’s coming along.

More to follow..!

Worlds Collide

Jason — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 08:30:32 +0000

IMG_8477.CR2, originally uploaded by jason.mcdermott.Worlds Collide happened on Sunday night at the Wall in Kings Cross, along with an updated installation of my pixeltag project. The night was a lot of fun and pixeltag was very well received, so all’s well that ends well!Tony Curran was kind enough to invite me to exhibit on the night and I was more than happy to oblige. I’d been looking to make some changes to the pixeltag project after Real Perspective closed at Tap Gallery in mid-January. Whilst being pleased that pixeltag got off the ground for Tap, I wanted to take it further – adding things like transparency, gravity and higher resolution. Previously all the programming had lived inside a Max/MSP patch, but lately I’ve been seriously considering some changes to my virtual repertoire.With this in mind, I made the rather ambitious plan to re-program pixeltag for Worlds Collide using Processing (which I had only briefly touched before), all within the space of a week! I’ve posted previously about my baby steps and early processing sketches that were forming the basis of my knowledge of how Processing works, and I’ll be blogging in more depth regarding the helping hands I had in putting the project together again from scratch, but suffice it to say after a couple of solid days learning and reprogramming, pixeltag came together better than I expected it to!The project saw a large audience at the Wall, with many people having the chance to play with the system. The updated pixeltag had additional features such as object-specific gravity and opacity parameters, all of which lead to a far greater dynamic in creating drawings on the fly.More images from the night are to come, as well as perhaps another installation in the near future.

pixelTag Revisited

Jason — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 01:00:05 +0000

Here are a few screenshots of the latest and greatest for the pixelTag project.I’ve taken the time to port some of the interaction and visualisation out of Max/MSP into Processing. So far the button presses are working fine as well as the r/g/b/a colour selection options and the size choice.pixelTag will be unleashed on an unsuspecting public on Sunday night as part of Worlds Collide at the Wall in Darlinghurst.pixelTag, as exhibited at Tap Gallery, 2008.pixelTag, using input from wii remote in Max/MSP + output from Processing.

Baby Steps

Jason — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 08:03:02 +0000

I’ve started from scratch, learning Processing using Dan Shiffman’s handy book Learning Processing.Above is the first little creation from the book, a little creature called Zoog, which I’ll be wiring up to respond to mouse clicks and all kinds of computer interactivity. It’s not much to start with, but it’s fun to get my hands dirty with Processing and learn some coding fundamentals.Anybody who’s interested in meeting Zoog can make him too, just copy + paste the following into a Processing sketch;

void setup() {size(593,225); // this is for image size considerations, nothing else!smooth();}void draw() {background(255);// set moderectMode(CENTER);ellipseMode(CENTER);// Body// rect(x1,y1,width,height);stroke(0);fill(135,181,209);rect(100,100,20,100);// Head// ellipse(x1,y1,width,height);fill(255);ellipse(100,70,60,60);// Eyesstroke(0);fill(0);ellipse(85,70,10,20);ellipse(115,70,10,20);// Legs// line(x1,y1,x2,y2);line(90, 150, 80, 160);line(110, 150, 120, 160);// Armsline(90, 110, 70, 120);line(110, 110, 130, 120);}

I’m looking to take Processing as far as possible, whilst being fully aware of it’s live performance abilities. So far Max/MSP owns the live performance aspects of my work, but I’d like to take things a little bit further and combine realtime interaction with some more considered string/array logging/analysing capabilities. I’ll be posting future updates on my baby steps into Processing, so watch this space.

google bot v2

Jason — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 07:27:38 +0000

This is the second post for testing the google spider bots.The link below does not contain any of my original work, it is merely to test the google OCR bots..we’ll see how it goes.http://www.jasonmcdermott.net%2F%7Ehome%2Fpdf%2F11231_martinscopic.pdf

pixeltag update

Jason — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 02:41:58 +0000

The pixeltag project has progressed once again;* the interface has been amended slightly to allow for yaw input (not just roll) as the ‘x’ axis data,* the ‘cursor’ item has been implemented, allowing the user to see where they are about to draw prior to doing so,* The up/down ratios have been adjusted to allow for nicer wrist movement.Tony Curran came by the studio today to give the pixeltag a test drive – he seemed pleased with the current level of interaction and novelty of the system, but asked for the following things;* IR sensor location for the ‘z’ axis (depth into/off the screen)* different input sensors (such as any one of the many phidget interfaces)* tighter control over strokes* pressure sensitivity for subtle differences (computer intuition, perhaps?) between strokesthis last point is an interesting one, as it would allow for varying conditions to be created by the user’s own interaction with the system, rather than a simple closed system with a predefined output. I have some ideas for the nunchuck that could work well with the wii as a dual mode interface (left/right hands doing different things..!)

architecture,projects,phd

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project ideas

Jason — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 07:54:36 +0000

Lately there have been many ideas/thoughts flying around regarding potential project outcomes for my fledgeline Ph.D. research.I wanted to get some of them out into the blogosphere, so I can get them out of my head and into some kind of intelligent format. So here goes;bus trackerWeb based interface for seeing real-time locations of buses (user defined, the 370 route for example).gps/wifi units installed in sydney buses, which update on a 30/60 second interval to a central server. The data for this can be accessed via the web (for computers or mobile devices), specific to each bus route or roadway. This could be achieved via an intelligent algorithm to parse gps info and isolate the particular road/street the bus was on, or compare the data to typical route windows for particular routes.Possible configurations for this could allow for the actual bus times to be compared with the ‘timetable-d’ buses (think ghosting from car racing games), so you can see if the bus is early or late, or an automated ‘location-destination’ mode for finding the buses most useful to you.(the motivation for this idea came to me one day as I stood waiting for a bus for about 20 minutes!)Notes: This idea could be fairly quickly mocked up using freely available tools, such as google docs and google maps (I’ll have to find my demonstration of this, which does not work in real time but can update a google map with a gps location as it is plugged into the spreadsheet), which are already web based and would work well with handheld web-able devices.pixeltagRealtime collaborative grafitti, using depth/physics/tag manipulation all from a single hand-held device. Inspired by the mobispray project, but looking to take the work much further.This idea is a bit of a cheat, actually, as I’m currently implementing bits of it as we speak. At the moment I am able to create a drawing, however primitive, using the wii remote as an input device. The prototype can control location (X/Y axis) using a trigger and the accellerometer data of the wii, and colour (up/down) and size (left/right) using the ‘d’ pad of the remote.Ideally I would like to be able to relate the wii location relative to the screen (possibly using IR) to control the ‘depth’ (Z axis) of the drawn element, as well as adding some imitative features of real graf (such as drips, splashability etc) based on the wii’s accell data. Also there is the possibility of taking the project to new levels by multiplying the users possible, the canvas space (which theoretically is an area measurement approaching infinity) and even the networking ability to allow for users to grafitti much larger environments – such as a whole room, the entire inside of a building or even an entire street/suburb.This is definitely a possibility, and within reach as the current input device is so widespread. As Johnny Lee would put it, the Wii remote (not the console, the remote) has outsold most tablet pcs or devices, making it the most commonly owned computational input device on the marked. All that is required is a number of (possibly networked) pcs and projectors and you’ve got your own grafitti city. Theoretically.So that’s where I’m at currently. The first project could get up off the ground over the summer, but I’m also very keen to get my hands dirty with the arduino module and some more bluetooth-able projects before next semester begins. The computational environments students won’t know what hit them~!