To be honest, Monday was a very silly choice of day to start my “create something new every day for a week” idea.
First, I’ve just come back from about a week of being off sick, so there’s a thousand and one people to apologise to for being out of the loop (I still haven’t managed to get in touch with everyone yet). Plus, Monday tends to be “where are we at with the project” day. There were updates, phone calls, emails, meetings, RSS feeds to check, emails to sort through, and then there was the actual work to be done.
So, what have I created today?
Well, I’ve been working on a presentation for tomorrow night to some of the board members of Advantage West Midlands - the regional development agency for the West Midlands in the UK. They have an annual budget of £300 million to improve the economic wellbeing of the region, and they recently published their draft “Regional Economic Strategy”. So we (as in Creative Republic) thought that it would be a good opportunity to talk to them about how this area of the UK needs to be looking at supporting and growing our creative and cultural industries so that we can narrow what’s being called the “productivity gap” in the region. Apparently we’re simply not producing enough turnover in this area, which is a big problem. And while manufacturing is in rapid decline, we’re looking at the possibility of the situation getting worse instead of better. Enter the creative industries. Could the kind of high value added businesses that make up the sector have an impact on the problem? We think so, and we also think that if a more concerted effort is put into making Birmingham a cultural and creative hub that we will see the kind of cultural and regenerative renaissance blossom in Birmingham and the region that has benefitted other cities in the UK.
That’s all well and good, but putting together a _document_ doesn’t really constitute artistic or poetic activity. Such is life.
I also designed some paper maps for the new Marketing Birmingham arts and culture campaign, but those are hush-hush so I can’t put them on the blog. And I’ve been sorting out some coding for the new Jamie Oliver tips page for the Channel 4 site that’s linking in to the new Jamie at Home series starting tomorrow night. So, not much I can actually show on the blog!
So this evening I’ve come home to finish some work I’ve been doing on an interactive light installation idea that I’ve had for this year’s 3form piece at Plus.
I’ve called it Splot and it’s an interesting webcam-enabled pixel toy.
Before you start, you will need a webcam turned on, select the correct webcam from the list that appears at the beginning and then play around!
This is very much a work in progress, but it should develop as time goes on. I’m aiming for an interactive projection at Plus, which is a good few weeks away.
Related posts:
- Creative Republic Launch Party and Charter (Photos by me and Isabel - thanks!) Last night...
- Create something day 2: Get your people to blog my people [edit - if you want to buy this tshirt,...
- I am going to create something every day for a week For the past few years, I’ve had a pretty simple...
- Create something day 5: A rebrand? I’m posting this on Sunday - day seven of...
- Out of Hours: To Blog or not to Blog This evening I’m heading over to the Light House...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
5 Comments
Works pretty well with my MacBook camera, one suggestion make the length of the stroke thinner based on the speed of the movement. So if I did a swipe at the camera it would look more Pollockish http://www.jacksonpollock.org/
Thanks Tom, funnily enough I already have that working with the first version I made, which uses mouse input instead of webcam, so that is already working in there under the hood.
However, the motion detection is rudimentary at best. It’s picking up the motion area of the image, but it’s using frame-difference detection to see which parts of the image have changed, and then randomising a position based on what area has changed.
I’ll try to improve it using some computer vision algorithms so that it pulls out a number of different areas that are moving so that it gives more smooth splat placements… version 2 is on the way!
BTW - I’m trying to avoid too many similarities with the pollock site - if you google it there was some shady goings-on associated with an artist using it without permission from the designer. Not good.
Advantage West Midlands, the unelected regional development agency, do not have a budget of £300m. They bandy this figure around in the press to make out that they’re something they’re not. The £300m figure they quote is the amount of money the British government gives to local authorities in the West Midlands euroregion.
Okay - I’ve just taken that quote directly from AWM’s About Us page: http://advantagewm.co.uk
Yes, they’re very good at misleading people. The £300m they’re talking about is money that’s given to various quango’s and local authorities which they influence.