Day 4: July 18, 2010

Activities:

  1. Project Discussions
  2. Second Life: experimented with animation of objects
  3. Shopping for project components at consumer electronics mall & electronic components market (Zhong Guan Cun area) with Shang Weng

Project Discussions:

  • Labour in real world -> Labour in the virtual world
    • Real-world labour -> Avatar action in Second Life -> Lindens -> US Dollars -> Company shares
    • For example, workers manufacturing mobile phones for Motorola can generate Lindens by transforming their labour 'force' into Second Life work ('camping'), which can in turn be exchanged for USD that can be used to purchase Motorola shares
    • Data feed created by harvesting real-world labour, can be used to earn funds in virtual world - for example, the feed wakes up and triggers avatar movement in Second Life to generate Lindens (via camping script/ Second Life work camp)
  • Survey of real-world income (monthly) in China:
    • Factory Worker - 900 RMB
    • Restaurant Staff - 500 RMB
    • Recent College Graduate - 1500 RMB
  • Where can we harvest labour?
    • Places of Labour:
      • Exercise horse (in public gym parks)
      • Restaurant
      • Electronics mall
      • Construction Sites
      • 798 factory district
    • People we don't know:
      • Restaurants: cooks, servers
      • Electronics mall sales staff
      • 798 District factory workers
      • Construction workers (cranes)
      • Migrant Workers
      • People in gym parks
      • Noodle/ dumpling makers
      • Martial artists (movie sets?)
  • Visualization/ Projection Strategies:
    • An array of small projection screens which can be moved to different depths, to create depth perception/ dimensionality
    • Fei Jun discussed one of his project proposals (for BENZ), which consisted of an array of glass globes (hung from the ceiling), containing small LCD screens; globes would move up or down in response to a user's physical height (using stepper motors on the ceiling mounts)
    • Fei Jun showed a the Kinetic Sculpture project by Art+Com (for BMW Museum) which utilized hanging globes controlled by stepper motors to create physical forms and animations
    • Jim mentioned project from graduate show at University of Hong Kong (Digital Media Lab), where Processing visualizations were projected onto dense arrays of vertically situated fishing line, to create dimensionality
    • Fei Jun showed project ('Lexus L-Finesse') by Tokujin Yoshioka from the book 'Where Space Meets Art', which employed dense walls of vertically hung plastic fibres to play visually with user silhouettes
    • Using pico-projectors (e.g. picoprojector mounted on a laundry line)
  • Display/ video capture equipment - proposed options:
    • Picoprojectors
    • LCD 'picture frame' with Wifi and MP4 capability (for streaming of video)
    • Small VGA monitors
    • IPods
  • Robotics parts - proposed needs:
    • Pneumatic cylinders
    • Motors
    • Controller board (Arduino or PIC)
    • Sensors
    • Webcam
  • Proposed locations to purchase technical components:
    • Electronic component markets, Beijing (Zhong Guan Cun)
    • Consumer electronics malls, Beijing (Zhong Guan Cun)
    • Taobao (http://www.taobao.com)

Second Life: experimented with animation of objects

Experimentation relating to how animations could be applied to hand-shaped objects, for the GestureCloud prototype:

  • Lynne Heller (in response to our questions motion capture): Her animations were not imported from Poser; instead, they were purchased within Second Life, and then timed using SL scripting (dummy avatars were created to be used as 'cameras', during capture sessions)
  • Judith purchased a 'shaking hand' prim object
  • 'Shaking hand' prim object turned out to lack articulated fingers -- Judith proceeded to construct a fully jointed skeletal hand, using the original prim object as a template
  • Using the Prim Puppeteer script bundle, Ken experimented with animating the hand, by moving individual 'bones' of the fingers
  • Limitations of Prim Puppeteer: The script essentially captures the current 'state' of the target object as an entire frame, and does not have tweening capability - therefore, the animation appears punctuated and jerky
  • Next steps:
    • Experiment with other animation scripts for Second Life, which enable smoother animation - for example: ZFAnimator, PrimAnimator

Equipment Acquired:

  • Servo Motors (2)
  • Linear actuator (1)

References:

Projects:

Kinetic Sculpture BMW Museum (2008)
Art+Com
http://www.artcom.de/index.php?option=com_acprojects&page=6&id=62&Itemid=144&details=0&lang=en

BENZ Project Proposal (2009)
Fei Jun

Books:

When Space Meets Art
Victionary (2007)
http://www.victionary.com/book/whenspacemeetsart_info.html

Second Life Animation Scripts:

PrimPuppeteer:
https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?ItemID=163931&file=item&name=Marketplace

PrimAnimator:
http://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=452936

ZFAnimator:
http://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=1151371

Contacts:

Zhongguancun e-Plaza/ Ke Mao Dashi
(Zhong Guan Cun electronics shopping area,
close to Wudaokou subway station)
http://www.beijing-visitor.com/index.php?cID=422&pID=1303

Shang Weng
Teaching Assistant, Central Academy of Fine Arts
(Friend of Fei Jun, who has experience working with Lego Mindstorms)