There's more here (day 47)

Geotagging is hot.  I like the idea of say Twitter being geotagged a lot except it brings up a bit of anxiety about being too public.  This is different than the stage fright I felt when I opened my first blog nine years ago.  At that time I was afraid of the judgment, not so much people knowing too much.  That fear came later when it became obvious that the internet does not easily forget.   Geotagged twitter or any immediately broadcast note service is like painting graffiti out in the open.  It better be good and/or sanctioned.    It brings up so many issues of what one may do with a simple lat long.  If that lat long happens to index government land,  are there restrictions on what you can say?  What about a mall or a store?   Owners of that spot will want to control what gets posted.

Geotagging is an extension of the 'i like it, i don't like it' principle to place which in some ways makes it much more personal.   Still I can see so many good things that could happen.  Favourite places can be highlighted with instructions about where to look, history sliders could highlight the changes in that place, stories of that place, replays of the last year's tweets to/on that place, songs tagged to that place.   It really could be little treasures to be found on an ordinary stop somewhere.  Ordinary magic really.   People could leave compliments about each other's houses or garden (I know I'm heading fast into Utopia).   The landscape could respond with subtle clues that geotagged content would complement the experience if we let it.  

The upshot is that we leave traces of ourselves as a matter of daily life and it's being extended into the digital and then back into the physical.   Geo-tagged visualizations will be interesting: as always aesthetically pleasing aggregators will be great gifts.   I think sound will also play an important role in how we become aware that a certain place is rich with content.   Still the issue of forgetting remains.  In real life traces fade and biodegrade.  Not so in the geotagged world.  Maybe forgetting is just something we selectively apply to data as a matter of habit and ethic.

A song for this post.

Stereo ahoy! (day 35)

This week Leila and Thea were here from Montreal to work on the Breath I/O project.  It was worth the stress of carving time from a busy schedule to work on the project in a more sustained way.  The main thing we are trying to work out is a workflow for the output of the Sony HDR-TG1 cameras we are using to shoot stereoscopic footage.   We had great hopes for the little Sony's and I think they will work out in the end but we've hit many walls along the way.  The TG1 is ideal for us because of its small size.  We can mount two TG1s beside each other on a Slik twin camera mount and shoot stereo at varying inter-ocular distances.   Miles built us a remote that controls both cameras so we can start/stop and zoom them in tandem.  Another ideal aspect of the TG1 is that they record surround sound.   With such a small microphone we wondered how good the sound would be.  It turns out to be quite good!   Overall we were pleased with the output of the camera but we started to hit some snags when it came time to edit the video.  The footage is in AVCHD format and the sound is Dolby Surround.   Here is what we know so far:

• The Picture Motion Browser software that comes with the camera will export the video to mpg2 or wmv with surround sound but not full resolution (it downgrades to 720x480)
• Final Cut Pro downgrades the audio to stereo
• Adobe Premiere can import the mts with surround sound and full res, but cannot output surround sound.  We did find a plug-in that may help but it's $295 and at this point we haven't given up on a cheaper solution.  CS4 says it comes with a trial version of said plug-in but we don't seem to have it.
• Stereoscopic Player does not play the surround sound (this is just a minor irritant since eventually we'll be playing the stereoscopic footage in a virtual environment)
• Interlacing is an issue.  The TG1 records at 1080 60i and needs to be deinterlaced to 1080 30p.  

So we currently don't have a workflow that preserves both resolution and surround sound.  The belief that this it must be possible keeps us searching.

Despite these setbacks we had some nice stereoscopic results with the footage that Leila shot of her nephews in track and field, and hockey.  The twin camera mount needs a level so some of the footage  had some vertical disparity but we were able to fix that in post-processing.  We tested the stereo footage on the old lung prototype and it looked interesting.  It kind of looked like the lungs were transparent.  Not exactly what we were looking for but perhaps with a little bit of a bumpy surface on the lungs, they won't look so mirror-like or transparent.

Another highlight was Trent's new model of the lungs.  They look great!  With any luck we'll be working with these on Monday (Leila's last day).

Miles was also around working with different sounds.  Making soundtracks on the fly for the silent videos we were playing.   We talked about different ways of teasing out the deeper resonance of someone voice in real-time.  He showed us an effect in super-collider which may be the start of what we're looking for.

A song for this post.

Curious noise (day 20)

Today Miles and I talked about what an environment of mixed soundtracks might sound like.    In Breath I/O the videos and their associated soundtracks will 'swirl' around in the environment surrounding the lungs, mixing with each other.  When there is no video playing on the lungs it makes sense for the sound to be noisy with a slight foreground of interest, a hint of some of the soundtracks.   As more videos are playing, the noise retreats more and more to the background but is still present.  There is a seamless blend between when the soundtrack is fully audible and when it goes back as part of the noise.   All of this is in five channel surround sound.   One of the things we talked about is that the noise would be algorithmically composed of the granules from each soundtrack.  Much like the video pixels are being used to shade the atmosphere surrounding the lungs.  I like that parallel a lot.  Miles had some great examples of composers who work with noise and subtle foregrounds of interest.

One of the aspects of the atmosphere that we still need to develop is whether it will be influenced by some kind of action.   We've even talked about the possibility of the virtual affecting the real by being able to generate air currents in the installation space.   Personally I think it would be ok if the environment was like weather, unpredictable and interesting.  Something the lungs would be subject to.

A composition for this post (courtesy of Miles). 
More of Rosy Parlane can be found on myspace.