1w92(2w42) Matthijs Munnik

So after all the reading and research of Processing and realising that I couldn’t find any idea on how to make it, I stumbled upon a work called Colour Aquarium by Matthijs Munnik ( http://vimeo.com/3661868 )

his work was similar to what i was trying to accomplish with my work. So i managed to find his email address on his portfolio website and I contacted him to ask him questions about his piece and if he could give me some advice.

Here is the email trail:

Hi Matthijs,

My name is May. I saw your colour aquarium and was interested to know how you created that?
sorry to be sending you random emails. i’m basically an MA student and i’ve just learnt Processing but what i’m trying to make is beyond any info that i can find in books.

basically what i want to make is similar to your colour aquarium. i want lots of dots to float around on the screen and each dot has a different musical instrument sample attached to it. when the user stands in front of the screen, when their shadow “hits” a certain dot, the music of that dot will play.

so simply put, the body of the user is the composer of the music.

but my deadline for the MA project is in 2 weeks and i’m still struggling to find any info on webcam interaction with Processing. everything uses mouse
please can you help me?! any info on what libraries etc. to use would be really really appreciated

Here is his response:

Hey,

Thanks, yea I can give you some pointers

Here’s what you’ll need to do:

• Load the video pixels and read trough them, see the brightness tracking example in you processing folder.
• Create some OOP code for bouncing or floating balls, look here: http://p5.chronotext.org/tutorials/motion_oop/
• Check if pixel X Y in the video data is black, (there’s a person there)
• if so then see if there is a ball floating at that point
• if so then play the sound file of that ball, look into Sonia library for that

Point the camera at the screen, put it next to the beamer, make sure you zoom in, so you only see the screen.

Use the easy setup example in your processing file.

You can also look into some other libraries on the processing website, and I suggest you also post your question on the forum.

Good luck!

Matthijs

Awesome!

or so i thought.

except as i stated earlier.. i suck big time at coding and as much as he was extremely kind to have responded and given me literally a step-by-step how to of what to do; i, for the life of me, couldnt find a way to make real what he had instructed me to do.

But thank you, Matthijs, for helping me in my hour of need. I hope one day that I can accomplish your guidance and fulfil it to the best of my ability. For now, I’ll have to put it on hold. i hope one day soon i’ll be able to create the installation piece as was originally intended.. in Processing and i hope it will look as amazing as your Colour Aquarium work

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