thinking outloud

i am trying to think about how to make the drawing api work so that it can create lines which are my own design. somehow i am thinking that i should be able to make a movieClip that moves to a new location but leaves a trace of itself on each frame it takes to get there. One problem with this approach is that it might be extremely heavy and slow everything down.
Another approach is to try and figure out how to mess around with the lineStyle but my guess is that it is far too advanced from a programming point of view to attempt. I will do some research to see if anyone else has done so.

big shout out to

Dave Stewart at metanurb.
http://www.metanurb.com/
you can see his work below. I haven't seen anything that comes close to the precision with which he has the motion detection working. He was very kind and sent me his .fla files for one of the games and told me to investigate infa-red cameras, which relates to the work of Jonny Chung Lee at MIT.
http://johnnylee.net/projects/wii/
Here is the game that Dave made.



Josh
http://hotarubug.wordpress.com/
 is being very helpful, sent me stuff on back projection, great book on AS3, the friends of ed books, Foundation Actionscript Animation: Making things Move. which has a section on drawing with the mouse which I used to get the motion detector to display in the example I posted yesterday.
Here is the final outcome of Josh's work. 

Jason Bruges studio

Jason Bruge Studio is an hybrid architectural/interactive art/lighting/environment designers. I found an article in Wired magazine

The Art of Surveillance

By Hugh Hart   

11.30.07

London Bridge

It's not falling down. Instead, the storied span has been rigged with motion sensors. "We monitored all the movement of people going across London Bridge and played it back as a matrix of colors on the top truss of Tower Bridge a few blocks away," says designer Jason Bruges. The installation also detects every phone with a visible Bluetooth connection and projects a color unique to the Bluetooth address.

 Jason Bruges does a lot of work with motion detection, he is speaking here about his contribution to the Pandamonia project: This studio proves the potential for marketable products and that clients are now the stakeholders of technology it is not so surprising that the Tower Bridge project was supported. (I do not know who the client was, but it could easily have been a mobile phone company or a bluetooth provider. The demand for complex interactive work is demonstated by the success of this company. In an interview Jason Bruge stated that he didn't have a job description. This area is so new that old forms simply do not fit any longer.

EyeCon

EyeCon is a software application developed by Frieder Weiss, working with Chunky Move, an Australian Dance company that uses interactive techniques in their performances. The software is uses motion tracking and is designed around creating 'hotpots' within the stage area which then trigger events such as sounds, film, or images (and flash). I downloaded the software and played around with it, as a rapid development tool for another project I finished that I want to make into an projected installation it would be ideal, and I could probably get it to work in a day or two. theatre and dancecompanies such as Chunky Move and TPO are producing interactive experiences that are at the forefront of motion detection.

whos doing what and why

what is going on out there with motion detection applications? In researching how to do this project I found there are loads and loads of people experimenting with it and putting it to all kinds of uses. First some of the technologies and approaches used: There is a c# environment cal AForge.net which is open source
see
http://www.aforgenet.com/articles/hands_gesture_recognition/ 
Since this is an c# programming approach it was not going to work for my project.
and it might be useful for anyone interested in c# to look at
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/audio-video/Motion_Detection.aspx

as the code is posted.

Another approach is 'processing' which looks totally cool and I have already heard about it, completely open source and non-proprietary (unlike Flash). However since I am working in flash this had to be rejected.
see Myron which is
http://webcamxtra.sourceforge.net/index.shtml
Here is some work that really blends the real with virtual, using the age old shadow game which becomes hugely embelished. Buit using 'processing' it shows an exceptional understanding of the potential of natural movement enhanced by digital media. The trend toward using digital media to extend the capacities of human movement is what interests me.  Artur C Clarke points out that advanced technology cannot be distinguished from magic.

motion tracking and drawing together

I am in the midst of trying to get to grips with AS3 in order to use the ostrich files by Dan Zen.
I have managed to get a cursor to follow the motion, but can's, yet get it to draw. I have sent some cries for help and hopefully that alongside bashing away at the code will produce results. I have completed yet more tutorials on the drawing api in AS3, but still cant understand how to integrate it. A most frustrating couple of days have passed.
....Isnt it amazing that once you give up and admit you failed that you somehow find the answer. Its very primitive and the lines are not ideal but it does work.

All I had to do was to add the graphics.lineTo  action to the cursor. Now I will have to figure out how to make the line drawing less jagged.