Evaluation

This project was something I really wanted to have fun with and experiment with skills I hadn’t explored yet. Therefore I chose to learn how to code and implement that into my Maps and Networks project. I didn’t really know the journey that I was in for. Like with any new software, you don’t really know how much time/work/effort would go into learning how to use it. 

My first idea was to create a video installation piece using code. Basically, I planned to use a webcam and possibly a Kinect camera to detect movement and have a screen where the person’s silhouette was going to be shown on the screen as stars/stardust particles. This was to show how humans are connected to the stars and share the same elements and how the beginning of our universe happened because of the big bang.

I started to learn how to code using Microsoft Visual Studio, which was fun but complicated.

I got the basic gist of the whole coding with visual studio thing, but when it came to using the Kinect and the right source-code for the project, it just wasn’t working. I tried and kept encountering many errors. Therefore, I had to go back to the drawing board and see if there was anything else I could do that still used code because I was really determined to learn how to do it.

I had a couple other ideas, one that I actually tried out was the smart mirror using the Raspberry Pi. The idea was to have a screen (most likely a tablet) behind a two way mirror. Then use code to detect audio, so that the user could speak to the mirror and it could talk back. The whole reason for this would be so that the user can tell the mirror their date of birth and the pi would detect the voice, then use the information given by the user to show a specific image on the screen depending on their star/sun sign.

I had to ask for help from my friend Yasmin Curren who studies Computer Games Arts and has some coding and Raspberry Pi knowledge at this stage because I didn’t have enough time to teach myself how to use the raspberry pi.

We sat down together and we found a source-code for voice recognition, but I had to scrap this idea again because there was a bug in the source-code that could not be debugged.

I started to think again, if there was anything simpler that I could do given that the time I had to work on this project was majorly running out.

The next idea was to have an installation piece where there would be a wall between two users. On one side would be a user looking through a hole into the wall that was directly facing a projector. Then, on the other side of the wall another user would be playing a quiz game where they would ask questions to the user. User 2 would input all this data into the quiz and based on the answer given, it would guess the users star/sun sign and then project User 1’s signs onto their face.

This idea didn’t work out too well because there wasn’t a way we could code it on the raspberry pi and it because way too complicated even for Yasmin who has used the pi before.

Yasmin really helped me out because I was stressed and she wrote down some options that I could think about to inspire some ideas out of me. 

I was really drawn to the idea of an interactive video, which birthed my final idea that I settled on.

I have this big book, with a lot of information about astrology so most of my research was done here. And I have some knowledge about the topic because it’s one of my interests in life.

After I had my idea solid, I hadn’t really learnt how to code in Python, so Yasmin was lovely enough to be my teacher for the day. She sat down with me and talked me through exactly how the Raspberry Pi works, and also how code worked in python. We used C#. There were a lot of bugs and debugging. Throughout the day, Yasmin taught me how to structure the code in python and how to debug. She sat with me through a lot of bugs and helped me correct any mistakes I was making. When we got the basic code down, she left me to the rest.

I had the video I had created, the overlay image, the desktop background, the twitter page and app developer settings etc. ready. I then went back into the structure of the code and coded what needed to be coded so that my interactive video would work.

This was my set up, with the Raspberry Pi.

The Raspberry Pi, PiCamera and buttons I have used.

There are many ways this project could progress. There could be 12 separate videos in a coded playlist that could play one after the other like I had initially planned on doing. There could also be a sound of a snapshot when the picture is taken for twitter, and also a countdown prompt etc.

Overall, this project was really fun and I’m very glad that I chose to do something I’d never done before. I learnt a lot that I didn’t know before, came across some complications but made it out with a result that I’m really happy with and proud of. If I could do anything differently, I would give myself a better schedule and learn how to manage my time better. The results would’ve been even better had I had more time to perfect everything.

Coding! on the Rasberry Pi

For this unit, I decided to use coding because I was determined to push and challenge myself.

I have been learning how to code on Microsoft Visual Studio and openFrameworks because I had gotten a source-code from Github. It was called video grabber and it would have connected to a Kinect camera to detect motion and create some particles of the user's silhouette using openFrameworks and video grabber. Something was going wrong with the source-code so I had to think of a brand new idea and with this idea came a new learning curve, which was the Raspberry Pi and a new coding software (Python).

First of all, I need to write down exactly what I want the code to do. I had learnt this from earlier on when I was using online tutorials to learn Visual Studio and openFrameworks.

This is basically the code in "English" not coding language.

My kind housemate Yasmin, has worked with the Rasbperry Pi before so she taught me how to properly create a circuit board on the Pi that would connect everything in order for my code to work.

I needed the following things-

• A Raspberry Pi
• A RasPi camera
• GPIO pins
• HDMI cable
• A breadboard and some buttons
• Keyboard
• Mouse
• A memory card
• A screen

After creating the circuit board and having my set up ready, it was time to format the memory card and get a OMXPlayer installed from Github onto the Raspberry Pi because it will be the path the videos will take to play.

Yasmin kindly sat with me for the day and I learnt how to start the code in Python (which i had never used before). She also showed me how to run tests to see if everything connected to the circuit board is working well. 

After running all the applications and everything was working well. She sat with me as I tried to work through this code and helped me out with debugging etc. 

I created the dependencies which were these: 

import tweepy

from omxplayer import OMXPlayer

from time import sleep

from PIL import Image

from picamera import PiCamera

from gpiozero import Button

from subprocess import call  

from datetime import datetime  

import sys

import os

and I was ready to start building the code.

This is the test code that I ended up with and was running it through the terminal to test if it worked. There were very many bugs with getting the videos to play one after the other using OMXPlayer, the code just wouldn't run. The video would either cut off before the second video played or it just wouldn't play the second video at all. This was a huge problem because to fix this issue, I would have had to create a coded playlist of all the videos which would've taken me weeks. I didn't have that much time left to work on this project unfortunately. 

So the next solution was to have one video that would run through all the signs and give the option of a button press which would turn on the camera, pause the video at the same time then wait till the tweet is sent to continue playing the paused video.

This was the code I used for that.

Error! Not another error surely? There was a problem with the amount of time the computer was going to sleep for whilst the video was paused to open the camera. This function for some reason kept crashing the entire Pi. 

This shows another test code to have the video pause and continue playing after the camera is closed a tweet is sent to twitter.

I tried to debug it for hours but nothing I was doing was working well so it was on to plan #3. There was no way to stop this code from crashing.

This was the first code test that went through to twitter and actually live tweeted the test.

Plan #3

1. I will have 1 long video, describing each sign, throughout the video the user can interact with it by pressing the red button. At any point throughout the video. 
2. The code will play the video and wait for a button press (the user will be prompted throughout the video) 
3. The video will stop, camera will open with an overlay image while the computer sleeps.
4. The user will be prompted to press the button to send the picture to twitter.
5. Picture will be tweeted using Tweepy and Twitter API with an overlay image, hashtag, text and timecode that I put into the code.
6. The Pi will then delete the tweet from it's storage to save space.
7. The video would then reloop and start again from the beginning.
8. If no button is pressed at any point throughout the video, then the video will automatically reloop. 

After spending hours and hours trying to figure out how I was going to do this, plan 3 worked.

The one that finally works!!!!

CLICK HERE TO VIEW CODE

Creating The Overlay Image and New Titles

I had to not only think about the code but the overall look of the overlay over the picture. Especially after the code had failed I had to make many minor changes to the overall piece, I had to create an overlay that was the "overall" sum up of space, planets, stars and astrology so that all the signs could relate to it.

Final Overlay

Once I was pleased with the final result which is right above. I decided to create a little gif with a flashing button to add at the end of the video to entice the viewer to press the red button if they hadn't already.

After all this was done, I decided to change up the look of the titles that were being edited into the video. So I created some new ones in Photoshop. Still simple, but a bit more of an astrological element to it.

Editing The Video

First off, I need some title pages to go before each video of the signs. So, I started off with that first.

I went into Photoshop and created some basic title pages that would be labels of the corresponding sign before each video.

I liked the simplicity of the title pages because I don't want the user to be that distracted by fancy titles, I want them to focus more on seeing what traits they might have/share. 

So, I have created one of each sign with their symbol directly under it.

Now I'm going to go into Premier Pro and chop up all of the video footage that I have from the video I filmed using a canon 700d camera. 

I imported all these files into Premier Pro, along with my titles and started assembling the videos.

This is what the timeline is looking like.

There is a gap between each sign's video to give the user time to press the red button and start the code.

This was pretty simple, but because we had filmed each element (fire = gold, water = blue, earth = green, water = silver glitter) on different days, the set up was always unfortunately a little different and therefore the footage and audio was not seamless. (This can all be fixed before the exhibition, it's time to make the code and figure out how to make the Raspberry Pi circuit board).

12 Sun Signs Descriptions for Interactive Video

These are some characteristics that you might have based on your sun sign alone.

ARIES
They have a strong personality and an entrepreneurial spirit. They are ambitious and self-willed, stubborn, obstinate and tenacious.

Weaknesses: nervousness, impulsiveness, wastefulness, provoking nature, restlessness and changeability.

TAURUS
They are strong-willed. They have charm, and are tolerant and stoical. They likes pleasure and the good things in life. Appreciates the Arts.

Weaknesses: obstinacy, laziness. They can be materialistic. 

GEMINI
They are opportunists. They can express themselves easily and learn quickly. They are welcoming and gentle. They like travel and intellectual work.

Weaknesses: a changeable and diffuse nature. Wastes energy by doing too many things. They lack persistence in achieving set goals.

CANCER
They weigh words carefully and are tenacious. Have a calm and discreet nature, tender, thoughtful, sensitive and impressionable. 

Weaknesses: They are humble, timid, changeable, indecisive, lazy, over-sensitive. Easily influenced by the family and sometimes manipulative.

LEO
They are masterful, like authority, aspires towards an ideal. They like to give advice. Are honest, frank, loyal, open and sincere.

Weaknesses: pride, vanity, arrogance, presumption and disdain of others.

VIRGO
Virgo exists in the mind, everything is inside. Virgo has a constant drive to improve and perfect, this can lead to extreme pickiness and finickiest. They are pure, their motives are honest never malicious and they want accomplish something.

Weaknesses: They are sceptical, fussy, inflexible, cold and interfering.

LIBRA
They have a great need to be part of a group. They like to mix with people and look for partnerships. They like and respect justice. They approve of society's values. They are level-headed and assimilate quickly.

Weaknesses: Can be shallow, do not think enough, can be frivolous. A dilettante in love. They are easily swayed by group pressure.

SCORPIO
The exude physical energy and courage, have strong passions. Understand regeneration and improvement and strong sexual powers.

Weaknesses: They are jealous, suspicious, manipulative, defiant, extremist: they are sometimes vindictive.

SAGITTARIUS
They are good, idealistic, enthusiastic and warm-hearted. They are independent, have a taste for travel and freedom. They are curious and fair-minded.

Weaknesses: They are too adventurous and leave things to chance: takes risks which cause problems: They are rebellious and sometimes tactless when offering opinions.

CAPRICORN
They are honest, reserved, circumspect, honourable and strong-willed. Quietly ambitious within the realms of the possible, they like and takes on responsibility. They can work in the social domain.

Weaknesses: a sometimes bitter and mistrustful mind.

AQUARIUS
Sweetness itself. Convinced of their ideas and strong-willed. They are foresighted and willful. They know how to trust. They appreciate all the good things in life. They appreciate and protect Nature.

Weaknesses: excesses in pleasure, laziness, sensuality, thoughtlessness.

PISCES
They are compassionate and sentimental. They like isolated occupations: administration, archives, history. Spirit of self-sacrifice.

Weaknesses: tendency to be led astray, lack of experience or inability to apply experience practically. Lethargy, over-sensitivity and emotionalism.

New Idea: Interactive Video

Scratch That!

I have been trying and testing out the code for my surveillance installation piece but it's just not coming together. I had trouble with setting up the Kinect for motion detection and connecting it to the code because I am pretty new to coding. There was a bug in the source-code that I could not access and debug. There was no possible way of getting this done in the time-frame that I had left.

The next step was to figure out something that I could do that still related to the concept and research that I was looking into. And also that I could code.

This is the final idea that I came up with. 

To prepare to start learning the code for this interactive video. I have to quickly type up some positive and negative characteristics of each of the 12 zodiac signs to make each video.

The next step is to start filming the videos, which I need an actress for to read the characteristics of each sign. She will have something in the video representing the elements of each sign (fire, water, earth & air).

I will be using a canon 700D and an 18-35mm sigma lens and rode mic to film the video. 

Step 3 is to make sure I make the photo that's going to be in the overlay of the code, and also an overlay over the user on the picture that will be posted to twitter.

After this I will need to think about making each title in Photoshop for each one of the signs. and a prompt page to let the user know when to press the buttons.

A background image that will be shown when the video is sleeping during the exhibition.

Then I will create a twitter API key so that the code would actually be able to connect to the twitter page that I created.

Once all this is prepared it can be implemented into the code which I will be learning in the python programme on the Raspberry Pi.

I know this is all very ambitious but I'm determined to make this all work before the exhibition in January.

Exhale, My Love Production

Shooting Days: 28/11/2016 & 29/11/2016

On set, my role was the Make-up Artist/Hairdresser and helping around if anyone needed an extra hand on set. As make-up artist, I really enjoyed my role as I got to dress and get the actors ready for each scene. I was lucky enough to be working with wonderful actors, who made no fuss and were just as excited as me about how everything would come together on set.

I had prepared all of the things I was going to take in to uni the night before. I had a suitcase full of clothes, make up, hangers, straighteners etc. My shared role as costume designer in pre-production helped keep me organised when it came to getting actors ready for specific scenes. During the shoot, I kept in contact with the first AD to make sure we kept on schedule and weren't falling behind time-wise.

Overall, I really enjoyed the two shooting days because everyone in our group, despite the stress worked really well and efficiently together to shoot what has the potential to be an amazing short film.