Lilia Perez's blog

Even before finishing my own infrared led touch screen, but after trying other screens and tables built with the same kind of technology, Luis came up with very valuable information: 4 Infrared lasers provided with special line generators, and placed in the corners of the screen can substitute the endless rows of leds and the soldering that they implied.
Again, a very generous group of people related to NUI group have posted the info on how to implement this formula online: http://labs.ideo.com/2009/02/11/hacked-rear-projection-tv-into-multitouc...

For this part I will do some research in using Touchlib http://nuigroup.com/touchlib/
"Touchlib is a library for creating multi-touch interaction surfaces. It handles tracking blobs of infrared light, and sends your programs these multi-touch events, such as 'finger down', 'finger moved', and 'finger released'. It includes a configuration app and a few demos, and will interface with most types of webcams and video capture devices."

Because I'm not a programmer / engineer myself, I will have to use TUIO protocol and something more manageable such as Flash, VVVV, Processing, PureData, or something of that sort. My friend Luis Fernández is coaching me through email, for which I'm quite grateful.

Regarging the touchscreen itself, it is still not 100%finished because I don't have a special kind of silicon which is needed in order to avoid air bubbles preventing the contact of the fingers with the acrylic plate and the projecting surface. I'm looking for ways to solve that issue. However it seems that there is a TUIO simulator, which allows writing applications and testing them without having to use any kind of multitouch interface, so it won't be necessary for me to have the projector, and all the screen paraphernalia on all the time while experimenting.
The most common simulator is the one made by the team who designed the reacTable at my former university in Barcelona: http://mtg.upf.es/reactable/?pic=reactivision04.png

With this, and the right libs and plug ins, I will be able to start testing my experiments quite soon.

After the experience with "Frontera" which worked with a kind of gesture tracking that is more similar to the single touch interaction, I'm experimenting with other forms of multitouch screen interaction. The first one I'm looking into is FTIR, which is becoming very widely used. Great tutorials about how to make your own multitouch screen can be found online. I'm using one that I found while surfing this site:
http://www.nuigroup.com

Frontera is actually kept at the Jan van Eyck Academy where it was shown in a sort of open studio environment during he opening week and at the Zichtopmaastricht where Jan van Eyck was the focus of the month. This project will be improved at the academy and serve as departing point for my research.

• Possible fields of study suggested by the work Frontera (to be contrasted and complemented with theoretical strand of Just Touch):
o Self image in the age of Facebook
o Touch in general and touch screens in particular.
o Portrayal by the study and depiction of personal
body gestures.
o Interactive high resolution portrayal: midway between photography and HD video.
o The mirror image.
o Prison, imprisonment.

Frontera was the project which brought me to Amsterdam, as an artist in residence at NIMK, Netherlands Institute for Media Art. This project dealt with motion tracking and gesture recognition through two firewire cameras situated at the corners of the screen. More information on the content of the project can be found here:

http://fronteraproject.net

My team-mates in this adventure were:
Robin Gareus, Arjan Scherpenisse and Eelco Wagenaar

The first version of the portrait used proprietary software. For Frontera V.2, all used software was replaced by open source software.

THE VIDEOBOOTH

After interacting with the portrayed character, some spectators will probably wish to become themselves part of the work by being portrayed. The videobooth was created to serve this purpose. This videobooth looks as a large photo booth, but it records video instead of taking pictures. When inside the booth, the user has to perform a set of movements in a game-like environment. Frontera’s program then turns the resulting video sequences into an interactive portrait. After completing the recording session, the user is able to play with his image, or allow others to do so.

THE PLAYBACK SCREEN OR INTERACTIVE PORTRAIT

A randomly chosen character observes the spectator from a glass screen. From his pose and the framing of the shot, he seems to be waiting to be portrayed. The character will carry on like this, breathing and blinking, until the spectator touches the screen. Then, he will come out of his immobility responding with the same gesture, placing his hand and gaze on the user’s hand, following any route it follows. Trapped in this small sequence of gestures the portrayed character meets the present one at an instant of simulated communion, which expresses both the will for communication and the impossibility of it actually happening.

Frontera v.2 is an interactive video installation featuring the videobooth: a tool for the creation of interactive portraits and the playback screen for portraits presentation and interaction. Based on FLOSS, computer vision and motion tracking technologies, and with an on-growing collection of over 150 live size portraits, it constitutes a study of the relation between the contemporary subjects and their own images.

Collage and Code, was the subject of the morning session. In it Michael Murtaugh spoke about his ideas dealing with what he calls "collage" editing as his preferred technique in manipulating video. As the title of the session clearly states, he was referring to collage achieved mainly by software and coding. In the first part of his presentation he explained that he had found in .srt files (the conventional file extension used for subtitles) a very powerful and simple resource for experimenting with the time line and the time code.