Phot 125 Class show

So, we successfully installed the collaborative piece.  It still had some small bugs, but I feel the students involved with it, especially those involved directly in the programming, design and construction, have a lot to be proud of.

The idea was simple, the execution.... well that's where the rubber hits the road.

These were the parameters:

An ambient sound, a sonfication of home sale data for the Bay Area was to play in the gallery until a person entered the room at which point it was to fade out.

When a person was sensed in the room via a PIR sensor, a spotlight was to fade up, illuminating the controller podium.

The podium had a handle and lens built into it which, as turned, referenced images and audio projected onto the gallery wall. Inside

The equipment being used for this was a 360 degree potentiometer in the podium connected to a Miditron board running to a Mam Mini via a MOTU Fastlane Midi interface.  Also connected to the MOTU was a CyberPak midi controllable dimmer.

In practice this all worked, but consistency was an issue.  We assembled the components and software and everything worked on the work bench.  In the gallery though, working all day, we found some glitches.  One was the CyberPak would switch modes, rendering the spotlight inoperable.  I ended up just plugging it into the wall.  The snooted spot didn't effect the projection in any way so it was not a real problem.

Another issue was upon rapid turning of the controller it would "freak out".  I believe this was the midi buffer filling up with just too much data.  It would ultimately get back on track, but was a issue.  There also appeared to be a small issue of drift in the values the Pot  would give us, this could have been some small amount of play in the mounting of it.  In hindsight, we should have gone with the individual mechanical switches for triggering the various clips.

Still the concept was proven and the full process of taking a project like this form white board to a functioning art work was a valuable learning experience.