Glocal » toolkit

Glocal Tooklit Preview: Multiple Exposure

Jer — Tue, 13 May 2008 19:44:45 +0000

We’ve been hard at work here in the Techlab on the newest Glocal Toolkit. This one is fairly simple – it allows users with a webcam to create multiple-exposure compositions quickly and easily. Like all of our toolkits, the final release will include instructions, educator resources, and the complete source code for all of you code-heads out there. The app should be released shortly – until then, here are a couple of test images from the app, created here at the Gallery:

Glocal Toolkit #1: Motion Sequence Application

Jer — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 02:19:18 +0000

We are happy to announce that our first Glocal Toolkit is available for download. This software toolkit allows you to create motion sequences from a webcam feed. The Toolkit includes the Motion Sequence Application for Mac, Windows, and Linux platforms and instructions for use. Also included is a worksheet for educators titled ‘Looking at Events in Time”, which looks at the various ways time and events can and have been represented in art.

Over the next few days, I will be posting some tips and tricks that you can try with the application, and will provide instructions for uploading your contributions to our Flickr pool. The next version of this Glocal toolkit allows for import of pre-recorded video. It is currently being tested, and will be released sometime next week. Stay tuned!

Download the Motion Sequence Application

Toolkit Preview: Motion Sequencer

Jer — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 18:58:00 +0000

Throughout the course of the Glocal project, we will be developing and distributing toolkits which will allow artists of all levels to contribute to our content base. Software, hardware, and conceptual toolkits will be available on our website for download as they are completed.

The first software toolkit facilitates creation of the motion sequence grids that we have been posting here and in our Flickr and Facebook groups. Built in Processing, the Motion Sequence Toolkit creates grids from either live webcam input, or from pre-recorded video. In both cases, the application offers a different perspective on motion by separating it into still frames. Here is screenshot of the interface, in standard grid mode:

Here, we are seeing a motion history of the last 6 seconds of motion, displayed on screen as a grid (I’m holding a drinking glass in front of the webcam). You’ll notice along the top of the screen that there are some controls (in blue). Using this control bar, we can change frame rate, frame size, and frame arrangement. We can make the frames very large:

Or, very small:

We can achieve a slit-scan effect by reducing the rows to 1:

Or by reducing the columns to 1:

This toolkit gives us a variety of ways to look at motion from new perspectives. Of particular interest is the ability to take pre-recorded video and render it in different forms.

The Motion Sequence Toolkit will be available for public download shortly. In the meantime, if you are an artist or an educator who would like to get ahold of a beta version, please contact our project coordinator and we’ll help you out as best as we can.