software description

The software for the interactive installation was made using the Java programming language. The idea was to use a high-level language that offers enough flexibility in designing both sound and visual application software. Java, with its JavaSound and Java3D packages, provided all that was needed for that purpose. Java's networking capabilities were well adapted to what we needed for the other parts of the work, especially the web-based online performance.

the sound software

Moving the sound source in space is a challenging task. By using eight inner and four outer speakers, driven by a total of six audio cards, two different paths are created: an inner loop, with smaller speakers but higher angular resolution, positioned in the center of the installation under the strip, and an outer loop with larger speakers to provide the same power level as in the inner loop, but positioned in the corners of the installation space. Those two loops interconnect, allowing the sound to move around any of the loops and from one loop to the other. The crossing point corresponds to the place on the strip where its surface is horizontal, i.e. parallel to the floor.

Audio channels are interleaved, so that adjacent speakers are not driven from the same audio card. This disposition is chosen to prevent the need to use panning, so all movement can be produced by using volume control and channel switching.

To move the sound source from one speaker to the next, the volume level of the starting speaker is decreased, while the volume level of the destination speaker is increased. This mechanism is used to move the sound source all around the space. The sound clip starts playing on all channels at the same time, but with level zero on all channels but the starting speaker. Then, level is altered to make the source move form one point to another, muting channels as needed. This whole process is made with several simultaneous sound clips moving with different speeds and directions, each clip having its own move control process.

This is possible by synchronizing the sound reproduction on all channels. Synchronization is achieved by monitoring the creation of a file on the server, the only purpose of that file is to enable the simultaneous start of the clip on all computers. Information on the file to be used as source for that clip is in another file, along with positional information and level, and is getting updated continuously, several times per second. Data on this file is the movement control mechanism, generated by the server to correspond to movement of spectators in the installation space.

Some forty sound clips were used for the installation, around twenty seconds in length each. Six of them could be played simultaneously, each being looped a couple of times to compensate the length limitation (2Mby) of the software.

There was also a pair of sound clips, made of recorded whispers played forward and reverse, that were continuously playing and moving around.

the visual software

It is difficult to achieve video projection on non-planar surfaces such as the surface of the strip. To resolve this problem, an object was created in virtual world, that was the exact match of the strip, i.e. with the same form and dimensions. The virtual strip was split into six segments, each of them having a camera opposed to it that could see only the matching segment, all the others being invisible to it. Images obtained in virtual space by those cameras were projected on the surface of the strip in real space, by six projectors positioned at the same space the cameras have in virtual space, and with the same optical characteristics as the cameras. The challenge was to insert parameters in the modeling process to alter the shape of the virtual strip to match most of the imperfections of the strip in real space.

The rest of the process was to create in virtual space all the effects needed for the installation. The first layer of the projection was a texture created from Gordana's painting, the ouroboros (the "snake") was a wire-frame model of a 2D function used in some previous works, and the headlines were to be read from a text file.

The image used for the texture had to be with high resolution to avoid pixelation. The entire image, that was 6144 pixels wide and 768 pixels high, was cropped to obtain 18 images of 1024 by 256 pixels. The texture of each of the six segments has three slices, each covered by one image. This is due to the need to use textures that have sizes that are power of 2.

The movement of the "snake" is continuous, with constant speed and direction, and is not affected by the audience. A matching sound is used, that travels in both the inner and outer loop of speakers, in synchronism with the "snake".

The movement of the headlines has two components: a longitudinal movement, around the strip, and an oscillatory lateral movement. The parameters of those movements - the speed, direction, frequency, amplitude - are affected by the sensors placed around the strip. Adding some randomness and using parameter control make the final result less predictable, so the audience influences the motion, but is not able to control it.

the data acquisition software

The third part of custom-made software for the installation deals with data acquisition. A hardware interface was made, connected to the parallel port of the computer, to check the activity of twenty passive infrared detectors (PIRs), placed under the strip. Data lines of the port were used for output (driving the multiplexer) and control lines for input (getting the states of the sensors) to the computer.

This software was written in TurboPascal, and is running in a DOS window. It checks the state of all the sensors several times per second. Comparing the new state to the previous, when a positive transition occurs sensor activation is detected. Every time an activation is detected, a countdown mechanism starts. When it reaches zero, the sensor is considered inactive regardless of its actual state. A new activation will be detected only when a new positive transition occurs. The countdown time was adjusted to have a good response to average movement of the audience.

The mechanism of estimating movement is as follows: activation states of a range of sensors are ANDed with left-shifted and right-shifted previous values. By counting ones (matches) in the results and comparing these sums for the two cases, an estimation of the direction and the "volume" of movement is made. The sensor ranges used for this operation largely overlap, and the estimation is made for six sections.

 

© 2002 Zoran Milkovic