This screenshot from Glocal’s Motion Sequence Application (MSA) is an anonymous portrait of a tree in Holland Park – one of the many trees that were being showcased at Surrey’s Fusion Festival!

 Hello Glocal Blog Readers!

This Summer season has become an extremely prolific one for the info-crew at Glocal… 

In addition to the Canada Day festivities, the Glocal project was also represented by the Fusion Festival in Surrey (July 19-20, 2008), another Cultural Capitals of Canada initiative.

Computers in the tent were used to allow visitors to get creative with a web-cam. An additional computer provided access to the glocal website and blog so that visitors could see first hand how to download the software applications and contribute to the project.

Here are some more pictures from this culturally diverse summer blockbuster event…

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These images above were created with Glocal Long Exposure application, our newest toolkit, which is now available for public download from our toolkits page.

The Long Exposure Application is designed to mimic traditional long exposure photography. Early photographers did not have the luxury of split second shutter speeds, and the long duration of the exposures created a different kind of photographic aesthetic. This image by Daguerre for example:

This application allows you to set an exposure time ranging from seconds to hours and gives a live preview of the image as it develops over time.

All our toolkits are compatible with Mac, Windows, and Linux platforms and require a webcam to run properly.

Hello there GLOCAL blog readers!

Our info-booth presentation at Ottawa’s Canada Day celebration was a success!

The entire GLOCAL collective was chosen as an “artist” alongside the ceramicist Murray Sanders and the painter Deborah Putman to represent Surrey as the ambassadors on behalf of Surrey’s designation as a Cultural Capital of Canada for 2008.

We were all very grateful that the weather held up for this event as the evening before was pouring with rain and this horrendous weather reduced the grassy lawn of Major’s Hill Park to vast puddles of mud.

There was also some initial panic over the installation of GLOCAL’s main presentation monitor but this issue was also quickly resolved when the day arrived (scroll down for the juicy details).

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The images above, and the images in the site header were all created by Glocal participants using pre-release versions of our first two toolkits. We are happy to announce that these toolkits are now available for public download from our Toolkits Page.

First up is the Motion Sequence Tool, a simple software program for converting motion into a still image sequence via a web cam. As you can see from our Flickr Pool, there is a huge variety of images that can be created with this tool.

Next is the Multiple Exposure Tool, which layers captured photos to create photographic images via a web cam or connected video cam. You can store up to 25 photo layers, and combine them in any number of different ways.

Both toolkits are compatible with Mac, Windows, and Linux platforms and require a webcam to run properly.

>TOOLKITS PAGE

Still looking at the whack of images we have taken while flying across the Georgia Strait, it has brought to light the use of still images alongside moving images. As you must of guessed in the last blog, Real vs. Representation, the flying plane is taken from a brochure image of the plane we are flying in.

So what other things can be done when you introduce printed still images in front of the webcam.

The introduction of micro-narratives through the juxtaposition of images and live feeds. The printed drawing and the real time pilot suggest prophetic possibilties to the flight journey.

Or what if real time representation was sistered to the schematic? Check out this image of the Island and its map illustration.

This has given us some new ideas for the upcoming Fuse event!

One of the interesting things about the Motion Sequence Application is that it initially suggests that what is being captured is live and therefore real motion in real time. Without getting overly philosophical, what is it that we actually expect when the camera captures something over time? Look at these images taken while flying over Vancouver and the Georgia State.

What is real and what is representation?

Are there planes flying that close to ours? Is the propeller actually being caught and rendered almost still?

UPDATE: Glocal Camera Trigger Boards are here! And, we’re giving them away for FREE! 

Here’s a preliminary taste of one of the things we’ve been working on: the Glocal Camera trigger. This Arduino-based hack lets you take pictures by triggering your camera’s shutter on a time delay (every ten seconds, every 20, every ten minutes…), or by plain old sound: you make a noise and the camera takes a picture. We’ve been perfecting it and it is very sensitive- anything from a whisper to a loud sound will make it trigger the camera.

Our intention behind this is to come up with ways that the camera can be triggered from positions that are not connected to the body. If we aren’t holding the camera, imagine what kind of perspectives can be captured, and what unique situations might be documented.

We’ve asked our artist friend, Daniel Joliffe if he could come up with a circuit board design for this, one that makes for easy assembly and hacking. We’ll post that in a few weeks time, but for now, here is a zip file with the schematic in PDF and Eagle CAD formats, and the Arduino code too. And to whet your appetite for camera hacking, here are a few pictures of the first prototype.. (oh, and it fits in an Altoids tin).

glocal_camera_trigger_june26_08.zip (96k)