My website was partially deleted this week – I don’t know how, but there should be backups somewhere in NYU – I’m in the process of finding out where. So here’s my update via email:

This week, I spent more time getting the cv.jit externals to do what I want them too. There are so many objects and so many options with this package that I really have to pick a couple of the cv objects and stick with them. Having spent a good deal of time playing with these now, I see a bunch of hurdles:

-designing the actual instrument with computer vision in mind is absolutely necessary. In order to hone in on the part of an image that I’m interested in without getting too involved in computer vision, it is much easier to do so with careful lighting and coloring of objects. I think rather than being a setback, this is actually a positive thing for the performance. Careful lighting and coloring can be done in a way so as to enhance the entertainment value of the performance.

-I started talking to a guy with bad teeth and dirty hands on the subway – he was relatively eloquent and well-informed, but it ends up he collects scrap metal for a living. He helped me eliminate choices of metals for my piece, and gave me a tip of a scrap yard near my house in Brooklyn that probably has thin gauge aluminum like the type I’m looking for.

-I haven’t yet started worrying about the music composing part of the piece, right now I’m imagining music divided up into samples which are arranged in a standard sequencer. The cv.jit patches will map blobs in the video feed to features of these samples, such as where they fall in a measure, playback speed, effects, and possibly pitch (although this sounds like it would make things difficult).

-I also haven’t started using live video – up until now, I’ve been using saved movies so I could control my parameters and get to know the cv.jit capabilities. I have a USB camera, but it doesn’t work on Mac. I have to either buy a new camera, or switch to PC.