The performance this Saturday is approaching and I finally got my max patch to stop crashing my computer. Unfortunately, I will only be able to use photographs. Apparently, it was the video files that were causing the big problem. It is kind of a disappointment, but I am so glad it is working.

Basic run down of operation: The mysql object goes into a database, selects information from a specific table and then sends a url to the parsing object. The parsing object retrieves the image information and sends it into a get jpegs object which divides the different images up into seprate files and allows me to control their speed. Then the images are sent through a processor that makes them blur and move across the screen. There is still much to be down in the processing side of things, but the major difficulties have been resolved.

The images will get into the database from audience participants who will send them from their cell phones before and durring the performance to a specific email address (eye@free4md.com). A perl script running on the free4md server will retrieve the images from the email and dump them into a specific table.

Major problem still: Tonic's interent connection (will I will be investigating this week).

Continue reading "Performance This Saturday" »

Posted by Cat at 07:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I finally have a test patch and it actually works!!

I had a little bit of trouble getting it to work initially so I figured I would post my difficulties here in case anyone else wants to use this functionality. First, obviously, you have to go to the website and dowbload the object. (please see former jitter post). Once you download it, you have to make sure that the libmysql.dll is in the same folder as the max/msp application. Then you have to make sure that the object, mysql.mxe is in the common files/cycling74 folder. On a PC this would be C:\Program Files\Common Files\Cycling '74.

So far it does not seem that there is a mysql object for the MAC??? This may be wrong, but my search has not yielded any results. Also, if you are using dreamhost you have to go into the database user profile and make sure that you delete everything after the percent sign for where you can access the databse from otherwise it will not let you access from anywhere but dreamhost.

Posted by Cat at 08:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Luke informed me about the possibilities of writing sql statements in jitter.

Follow this link to download the plugin and view documentation.

I plan to use this for the jitter preformance instead of using the folder object. Basically it will be the same sequence, cellphone to email address to perl script, except perl will insert the video into a database and jitter will access the video files from there. It looks like it will be somewhat easy to figure out....will post a patch when I finish it.

Posted by Cat at 08:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

To find out about my ideas for the LIP/NIME performance on Saturday, April 29th at Tonic please visit my project page.

Posted by Cat at 05:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In conjunction with the Producing Participatory Media class, I am interested in exploring the capabilities of Jitter in using streaming media or media uploaded to a server from remote sources to create something interesting, preferably with short segments of cell phone video. Please see the blog post directly before this for PPM. Until I receive lots of content and further explore the Jitter streaming capabilties, I am not sure if for this class I will want to stick strictly with the outcome being a website or whether I will want to use the media in some kind of live performance aspect. I think I would like to experiment with both. I am planning to send an email to the ITP student list asking everyone with a video enabled cell phone to post something small to my blog via email, as I already have a perl script running on my server that checks a specific email address, saves these video files in a folder on my server and then posts them to my mobile vlog. This idea is in its infant stages so I'm not exactly sure what will come of it but I am very interested in the possibilities.

Posted by Cat at 09:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For my first meditation assignment, I wanted to use video from the lowest common denominator because i am interested in what happens when people use inexpensive ubiquitous tools to create media. I shot some video with my camera phone and with my digital (still) camera, both of which record short segements of video at relatively low quality (in comparison to what I'm used to). I then set up a patch that grabs images from a web camera (very cheap and ancient one) and combines them with the pre-recorded video. I used the provided beginnings of a patch to create something interesting using various effects including being able to make the window fullscreen and revert it back. My largest problem with this meditation assignment, which actually turned out not to be a problem, was that QuickTime has updated itself so that it now no longer recognizes WinVdig, the driver PC users have to use to connect with QT from WDM. Thankfully, Luke provided me with the jit.dx.grab option, which uses a windows driver. I was quite happy to see that the people at Cycling 74 realized that Windows users might need such a thing. I wish the people at QuickTime were nice enough to fix this so I can use WinVdig with QTJava. For anyone interested, not that there are many of you who are, I have included some suggested fixes from Dan O'Sullivan in the previous post.

Here is the patch:

Posted by Cat at 07:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)