Visual Design, Interaction Design, and Tangible Media

with Amy Franceschini at Dutch Electronic Art Festival

Description
1. Computer makes a portrait of willing participant.
2. At the same time, I draw participant by hand.
3. All gear is mobile, by way of a fancy cart.

How It Works
Custom software receives live visuals from a webcam, extracts a still frame, and makes a drawing from the still. This software is a tweaked version of Blind.

Left: a software drawing of Chris Musgrave

The gear consists of a Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop computer and a no-name webcam with a flexible neck.

Left: demonstrating the software to the workshop participants. Photos taken by Luthe r Thie

Analog is Better
For each portrait the computer constructed, I made a hand-drawn one using pen and paper. When the drawings were finished, the sitter got to keep the paper portrait, and I emailed him or her the image my software produced.

B/W photos taken by Karmen

The Cart
Amy Franceschini built an amazing wooden cart on which my laptop and webcam sat. We planned to take the cart outside as well as within different areas of the workshop space. Unfortunately, the sidewalk outside _V2_Ground_Floor was too narrow for the cart to be situated elegantly.

Two stools were placed behind the cart, for the current subject-to-be-drawn and myself to sit on. In addition, a plastic canister rested on a platform on the cart's side; we intended for this to contain beer, which would be served to willing participants (to ensure satisfaction with their portaits).

We did not serve beer in the end, but the drawings were still a big hit.



Skills used: QuickTime for Java, experience design, illustration