New Media Project Blog 2: The Bloggening

In Class: In class we presented our findings from our dress rehearsal yesterday.   Saturday (3/16):    Vivian, Cindy, Yash, Lara, Nick, Lauren and I met from 11am to 4pm in the motion capture studio today to troubleshoot all of the connections in the bodysuit and make sure they are all working perfectly.  We borrowed a multimeter from Emil to test each zone and make sure they were all connected successfully to the board and not overlapping with one another anywhere. Me testing the conductivity of each zone on the suit Me, Vivian, and Cindy repairing broken wires We discovered that three of the wires had snapped off right where they connected to the board, and two had pulled out of the arms of the suit.  One that pulled out of the arm detached from where it was connected to the tape and was lost inside the suit, and the other somehow retracted inside of the rubber tubing surrounding it.  I shimmied both wires around until they reached properly to their ...

 DRESS REHEARSAL (3/11): TIME FOR THE BIG DRESS REHEARSAL!!!!  AHH!!!!!! Vivian, Lara, Cindy, and several other team members met up at the motion capture lab at 3pm to start getting ready. My thesis class is from 3pm to 5:50pm, but kind Father Emil let me, Nick, Varun, and Yash go at about 4pm so that we could help set up for when doors to the project opened at 6pm.  I brought a cape I had patterned and sewn previously for Nick to wear for his ringmaster role.   I knew he was going to be playing a big bombastic personality and figured he needed a little pizazz in his appearance as well so that visitors would be able to see that he was a part of the performance.   Nick in his ringmaster cape FINAL COSTUME:  Vivian grabbed the costume from me at 3pm and was kind enough to solder the wires I had sewn in and labelled onto the 12 point capacitive touch sensor.  There are three different levels of discomfort divided throughout the 12 different sect...

  IN CLASS: We showed off our video evidence of the suit triggering the sounds and the kinect motion trackers working at the same time.  Paul emphasized that we needed more complete visuals and effects on our virtual stage, so we gotta get that working.  My priority is of course to get the suit done. THIS WEEK:  FRIDAY (3/8): I met with Cindy and Preeti in the Glitch Lab from 2pm to 6pm to get as much done on the bodysuit as possible, since it's my primary responsibility.  The beautiful and talented Lauren came by and dropped of the new rolls of conductive tape around 2:30pm so we were finally able to continue covering the suit with lines!  Hooray! ATTACHING THE WIRES TO THE SUIT I was alone from 2pm to 3pm, just working on stitching the wires that connect to the arms into the interior of the suit.  I did my best to conceal them along the seams of the suit, and underneath other lines of conductive tape where they had to branch away from the seams....

IN CLASS: On Tuesday, we did our live presentation of progress for Paul.  I was extremely proud of the work we did and all that we had accomplished, and he was predictably very disappointed.  Pictured below:  Cindy, our brave model, showing off the massive amount of work we've done so far, integrating:  Two Kinect sensors Touch Designer Capacitive touch sensors Feather V2 Unreal Engine UDP communication MIDI controllers  The wifi, projection, and sound systems of the Motion Capture Lab The experience design of 11 beautiful people I found it amusing that he was so critical of "how far we need to go" and how much "needs to be done" to "complete" the project given that 1.) he is continually moving the goalposts and 2.) such comments are completely antithetical to the conceit of the class as stated in week one, and as documented in the syllabus as follows: "The main purpose of this course is to provide students opportunities to experiment, to challeng...