Julian Stadon Temporary Site

This is where I’m housing my project archives while I reconstruct my website.

Apologies for the messy interface!

Current work

Project SLARiPS 

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This proposed research aims to create a complex networked dialogue between a virtual space (Second Life), physical space and bio  space, through using PHP XML communication, mixed reality visualisation techniques and a biofeedback system. The project will expand an ongoing project: SLARiPS (Second Life Augmented Reality in Physical Space).


SLARiPS utilises a variety of processes in order to manipulate data in both the AR application (2ndlifeARVSpace_distance.py) and in Second Life. The AR system has been implemented using the OSGART library . The user is equipped with an E-Magin Z800 HMD, and a Logitech Quickcam 5000 USB camera. An XML RPC system was then developed, using PHP to communicate between the two worlds.

As the viewer moved into the first zone a 3D frame augments on the virtual marker, alerting them to the system’s existence. As they enter the second zone the XML RPC is sent through to SL. Here an object was created and scripted in Linden Scripting Language (LSL) to at first be hidden and then shown upon entry into this second zone. This object was textured with a screenshot of the environment behind it so that it could act as a screen. This has the effect of hiding the avatar, visually appearing as if they had disappeared. This process was necessary due to the restrictions in place regarding the scripting of avatars in SL. As the SL avatar disappeared an avatar model augments from the virtual marker (placed in SL). Another step closer to the screen and the avatar appears to walk out of the screen down a slope and onto a real world marker placed on the floor. As the avatar walks down the slope and the viewer edges forward slightly, the avatar becomes proportionately life size.

 

Current research involves implementing an MRI scan of my human organs into Open Scene Graph and then into the 2ndlifeARVSpace_distance.py application. The resulting models will be attached to individual real world markers will be able to be inserted into the hollow avatar mesh via marker proximity tracking. I will then be able to trade my virtual organs with other SL users, clone and sell them and so on. The idea was inspired by an article in Wired Magazine How to Sell Your Body for $46 Million  that speculated the total price of the body if every reusable part could be used.

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Along with this I will introduce a biofeedback data response system that will animate the virtual in world organs according to my heart rate/ECG rates etc. in real time via the same PHP server communication being used for the mixed reality data transfer. Visualisation of the biofeedback will be displayed on a monitor and in Second Life through QuickTime streaming and Processing (see below).

Current work- Biofeedback proposal

Further articulation of research concepts and of system feedback will be displayed in a combined video format that collages the Second Life in World environment (via video screen grab streaming), the Mixed Reality output (via HMD direct stream feed) and real time video of the physical interactive environment. The three source videos will be run through processing, broken into matrices and clustered as pixels. The collaged output will appear as a highly pixilated ‘living’ video with pixel movement being mediated by the biofeedback values. Time permitting I will also import proximity data from the MR system to create a composite value with the biofeedback.

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Relativity to the theme of Screen:

This project uses multiple screens, communicating in a number of ways, primarily as hypersurfaces. The hyper surface is the site on which bridges are built: where the real and virtual, material and textual, author and agent can meet and interact with each other.

So the hypersurface is a zone of exchange between consciousness (language and text) and levels of the inorganic…Able to present dichotomous relationships, between representation and matter, inside and outside, organic and inorganic, the hypersurface is the site of virtual performance

Augmented reality is a superb hypersurface as it presents virtual content within the context of immediate physical environments and functions as a system open to interaction and manipulation. Connections are made between physical and media communicated image spaces, expanding the boundaries of visualization and creating a shared architectural space for information exchange. The transferral of elements from a virtual environment to physical spatiality produces a new perspective on virtual presence, creating nomadic sites for intervention. Here   the viewer can interface with the real through to the virtual.