Elie and I finally had some “free” time to go back to the multi-touch interface. We worked on the core library called Distal. Distal enables us to quickly put together a multi-touch GUI. It takes care of all the contact points [touchPoints], and their interaction with the GUI components [toggle button, dragable button, slider, dock, etc.]. We are also using ezGesture, which is a gesture recognition library for Processing recently released by Elie. So far, it is only used to interact with the docks containing the GUI ; one finger sliding from right to left in a specific area of the surface will make the dock appears.

Here are some visuals created using facecloth and a video showing the interaction/process.

faceCloth MT – Distal from smallfly on Vimeo.

Elie and I met early afternoon. We turned on the computers, plugged in the cam, wired the projector and finally lit the LEDs. While working on some code (multi-touch UI) we have on ‘track’, we set a goal to produce something by the end of the afternoon. Here, sur(ta)face came to life. sur(ta)face will be the name/repository for a collection of projects/experimentations using the multi-touch interface.

sur(ta)face > faceCloth is the first project/experimentation under this label. The original faceCloth, by Elie, is an exploration of the relationship between real and virtual control. Live video is mapped onto a digital cloth, which reacts to its environment in a realistic fashion. The user selects the desired image and then manipulates the display geometry in order to create rich visual compositions. I like to say that sur(ta)face > faceCloth came in to existence to fill one of Elie’s anxieties about his “pursuit to build a decent physical controller.” (see here).

faceCloth > sur(ta)face from smallfly on Vimeo.

Really…. I believe that our interest here is to work with video (must it be lived or pre recorded) as a malleable material. To distort and stretch time as well as splatter and freeze ‘alive’ pixels on a surface…. A performative surface.

On theses photos and video sur(ta)face > faceCloth runs using Lost Se03 Ep18 as video texture.

This is our [ Thierry Giles and myself ] first prototype in the field of multi-touch surfaces. As the well know project of Jeff Han, our interface uses the FTIR technique. Infrared light and computer vision are used to track users’ fingers motion/interaction with the surface.

leClone from smallfly on Vimeo.

Thanks to: Julien Gachadoat (v3ga), and of course Processing and its community for their tools, libraries, sketches (i.e. “Exhaust” by Ryan Alexander), code samples, advices, etc.