Category: Blog

 

Tim & Barry, dontwatchthat.tv and H&L put together a great 3 hour show. Streamed live on U-stream, as part of The Create Festival.
Watch highlights at www.dontwatchthat.tv.

Thanks to:
Creative Technology London for being amazing and providing us with some great kit.
Beccy McCray and all at Nexus Interactive Arts.
Bafic for being Bawse.

 

As part of the Create Festival we were invited with other parts of the Nexus Interactive Arts roster to install work at the Create House. We exhibited Feedback I – a collaboration with Todd Vanderlin. Created in openFrameworks. Feedback I was originally created with the support of the Roundhouse and onedotzero.

A 3D render of our projection surface.

That’s supposed to be Adam Levine.

Shape Construction putting the finishing touches to our full size projection surface,  just prior to the event.

The studio set up plan for the projection and interactive system.

A rendered fly through of the studio space.

 

Various development images of the interactive modes, each designed to deal with a separate interaction with the fans.

 

As part of Loud Tate, we created an audio reactive VJ app which was activated by a live performance from Jammer.

Full source code available on our GitHub page.

We were invited by onedotzero and the Banff Centre to install Feedback I in the new Kinnear Centre. As well as architectural scale projections on the exterior of the new building we collaborated with Graham Frampton to produce a new bespoke frame for the installation.

In May we created a print for exhibition at London’s Outline Editions Gallery. Prints may be purchased through their website. More alternates can be seen below.

We have just started doing a radio show on London Fields Radio.

Matt is our lovely producer.

You can see our show notes above. Doing the show is part of our “Scare Ourselves with One New Thing Every Month” policy. What will we come up with next month?

Here are all three of us in the booth at Wiltons Cafe, where we record the show. You can find the archive of all the shows on London Fields Radio at their Podcasts page.

Update! You can find the latest shows at the London Fields Radio Mixcloud page.

In February we contributed a print to the “Love and Haiti” exhibition organized by our friends at Darkroom.

The first sketch of the idea by Pete.

Please see the original project post on Mirror, Mirror for more details on the project.

First successful multi-person track.

First successful track with a mask larger than the face itself.

We created a custom drawing tool to allow Pete to generate mask paths for the installation. This is a grab of one of the first paths drawn.

A grab using some of the custom elements that Pete had selected from the V&A archive. It was obvious at this stage that the next step was to add reflected elements, as well as scaling to ensure that the masks generated didn’t get overwhelming in scale.

A grab of a scaling, mirrored mask.

Please see this post for more details on the project. An early render of the installation, when still at the planning stage.

We started to build the installation in West London at Shape Construction‘s space.

Experiments with coating attachment techniques. We ended up using a material reclaimed from car tyres.

Joe, who helped us on the project, testing out the face tracking software.

Pete experimenting with the face tracking, and his laser eyes.

Joe organising mirror pieces at Selfridge’s before moving them into the window area proper.

Rigging and planing in the window itself.

Final squeeze.

At 0900 in the morning, after a very very long night.

Pete and I decided to use WordPress for the new version of our site, after the super minimal previous version.

I spotted that the new version of WordPress gave a new thumbnail feature that I was very keen to utilise:

http://markjaquith.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/new-in-wordpress-2-9-post-thumbnail-images/

I was interested in using the Thematic Theme Framework, but also wanted to add custom typography, via the new CSS Fontface feature, beautifully explained in the article linked to below:

http://nicewebtype.com/notes/2009/10/30/how-to-use-css-font-face/

Particularly great is the @font-face kit generator, linked to in the article. As for font conversion, after downloading X11 for OS X, I downloaded the superlative and free font utility, FontForge.

I used this post to learn how to remove the side bar from the site for non-front pages, and the following code to generate the front page:

<?php
/*
Template Name: HellicarAndLewis Front Page
*/

global $options;
foreach ($options as $value) {
 if (get_option( $value['id'] ) === FALSE) { $$value['id'] = $value['std']; }
 else { $$value['id'] = get_option( $value['id'] ); }
 }
?>
<?php get_header() ?>

 <div id="container">
 <div id="content">

 <?php thematic_navigation_above();?>
 
<?php get_sidebar('index-top') ?>

<?php thematic_above_indexloop() ?>

<?php
$my_query = new WP_Query('category_name=Selected&posts_per_page=-1');    

while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post();  // Start the loop:
// This is just what we decide to show in each post ?>
<div id="post-<?php the_ID() ?>">
 <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>">
 <?php thematic_postheader(); ?>
 </a>
 <div>
 <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>">
 <?php the_post_thumbnail();  // we just called for the thumbnail ?>
 </a>
 <?php the_excerpt();  // we just called for the excerpt ?>
 <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>">
 <p>Read more...</p>
 </a>
 </div>
 <?php thematic_postfooter(); ?>
</div><!-- .post -->
<?php
endwhile; // loop done, go back up?>

<?php thematic_below_indexloop() ?>

<?php get_sidebar('index-bottom') ?>

 <?php thematic_navigation_below();?>

 </div><!-- #content -->
 </div><!-- #container -->

<?php thematic_sidebar() ?>
<?php get_footer() ?>

And the category pages for Blog and Project posts:

<?php
/*
Template Name: HellicarAndLewis Projects Page
*/
global $options;
foreach ($options as $value) {
 if (get_option( $value['id'] ) === FALSE) { $$value['id'] = $value['std']; }
 else { $$value['id'] = get_option( $value['id'] ); }
 }
?>
<?php get_header() ?>

 <div id="container">
 <div id="content">

<?php the_post() ?>

<?php thematic_page_title() ?>

<?php rewind_posts() ?>

 <?php thematic_navigation_above();?>

 <?php
 $my_query = new WP_Query('category_name=Project&posts_per_page=-1');    

 while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post();  // Start the loop:
 // This is just what we decide to show in each post ?>
 <div id="post-<?php the_ID() ?>">
 <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>">
 <?php thematic_postheader(); ?>
 </a>
 <div>
 <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>">
 <?php the_post_thumbnail();  // we just called for the thumbnail ?>
 </a>
 <?php the_excerpt();  // we just called for the excerpt ?>
 <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>">
 <p>Read more...</p>
 </a>
 </div>
 <?php thematic_postfooter(); ?>
 </div><!-- .post -->
 <?php
 endwhile; // loop done, go back up?>

 <?php thematic_navigation_below();?>

 </div><!-- #content .hfeed -->
 </div><!-- #container -->

<?php thematic_sidebar() ?>
<?php get_footer() ?>