Category Archives: Videos

Students, Videos

Student profile: Ryan Singh (BSc Computer Science)

Third year BSc Computer Science student Ryan Singh introduces his current project, Ouroboros (named after the ancient symbol depicting a serpent eating its own tail).

img_meDuring the first term of my third year, I studied the Advanced Graphics & Animation and Physical Computing modules, which gave me a wider understanding of graphics, virtual environments and electrical prototyping.

I’ve always had an interest in virtual reality (I’m a big fan of The Matrix trilogy) and with new VR applications being released, I wanted to get involved and start developing. I acquired an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset and became interested in the translation of body movements within virtual environments.

If I wanted to control an object within a virtual environment (for instance a camera or a sword), I would use a controller. However I did not feel a sense of immersion, so I began to prototype a device that could translate the orientation of an object to manipulate an object within a virtual world. My project, which I’ve called Ouroboros, can currently translate its own pitch and roll to manipulate a camera within the Unity game development engine.

As it stands, Ouroboros only translates orientation in real time. To provide a truly immersive experience, linear (e.g. forwards and backwards) acceleration would need to be achieved. This will come with future updates to the firmware of the sensors.

I plan to release it as an open-source project so users can build their own homebrew virtual reality systems and – using a third-party software such as FreePIE – can control any game using Ouroboros as a controller instead of conventional joystick controllers.

My work with serial communication has also allowed me to contribute code to Unity’s Mono libraries, which are used for .NET Framework emulation.

How have your tutors helped you with this project?
Marco Gillies, who teaches both Computer Science and Creative Computing, is an expert on virtual reality and has provided a great deal of help into the fundamentals and theory of virtual reality. He has assisted me throughout the process and kept my project going in the right direction.

Brock Craft, a lecturer for Physical Computing, has also helped me throughout the electrical prototyping phases of my project. Without his insight into serial communication and general knowledge, the project would look a lot worse for wear.

Why did you choose to do BSc Computer Science at Goldsmiths?
I chose Goldsmiths because of its famous reputation in the world of the arts. I came from an art and design background and I only had a basic understanding of programming from my ‘A’ levels. Since I already possessed some form of creativity, I opted for the more technical BSc Computer Science.

The degree provides students with a mathematical foundation, the theory behind computer science and programming languages. You also gain a full and in-depth understanding of the requirements for developing software in a real-time environment.

I found that my passion for game development had a place within Computer Science and this allowed me to create virtual environments, particle generators and produce my own fully functional game engines. The course is extremely flexible and you can incorporate your personal interests to the technical assignments.

Students, Videos

Student profile: Ana Belén Alonso

Artist and Goldsmiths student Ana Belén Alonso describes a recent Computational Studio Arts project she’s been working on:

In this first term of MFA, my goal was to get to grips with the languages of programing JAVA and C++ by doing tutorials and viewing examples that had to do with my interest in knowing more about how humans interact with technology.

The idea of this project was to create a visual instrument. This instrument works using different eye expressions so you can play all the notes of a scale and also be able to change the scale and instrument.

I used the code ofxFaceTracker to extract the blink of the eyes. After this I connected a sound to the blink movement that is captured by a camera.

In this first gorilla-eyesstage of the project you can only see in the screen the two eyes with a graphic that shows how much you blink. But the idea is to create a very simple graphic visual interface that will be like an animal mask that just shows the user’s eyes.

News, Students, Videos

Google/Barbican digital art site headlines Goldsmiths Creative Computing student

A Goldsmiths Creative Computing student is featured on the front page of DevArt, the new digital creativity website from Google and London’s Barbican Centre.

DevArt is part of a new digital art installation for Digital Revolution, the biggest and most comprehensive exploration of digital creativity ever to be staged in the UK. After running in London, the exhibition will then go on tour to cities around the world.

Year 2 student Terence Broad has developed a project that enables people to experience augmented reality by donning a virtual reality headset – the Oculus Rift. This uses two cameras to replicate the user’s normal vision (see video clips below) – and then allows others to distort and manipulate it.


Initial testing

Using the Google Hangouts API, people online can choose and link up sets of triggers and responses that control the perceptual experience for the user. Triggers can include motion detection, face detection, head movement, pitch, loudness and brightness. Responses can include image manipulation such as colour shifting, wobble and morphing effects, blurring, chromatic abberation and temporal layering (see video clips below).


The affect of Radiohead on visual perception. Low, medium & high audio frequencies control colour shifting, wobble, blurring and temporal layering.
The user experience: “This is awesome.”

Goldsmiths’ BSc in Creative Computing prepares students to take an active role in the creation of computational systems in arts, music, film, digital media, and other areas of the software industry that require creative individuals. About Creative Computing at Goldsmiths

Staff profiles and activity, Videos

Aikon Research Project – Patrick Tresset and Frederic Fol Leymarie

Why is it that the inexperienced person finds it so difficult to draw what they see so clearly, while an artist is able to do so often just with a few lines, in a few seconds? How can an artist draw with an immediately recognisable style, in a particular manner? And how, and why, can a few lines thrown spontaneously on paper be aesthetically pleasing?

A bold project using computational techniques to examine the activity of drawing – in particular sketching the human face – has been launched at Goldsmiths, University of London.

The AIKON (Autonomous/Artistic/IKONograph) Project has received funding from the Leverhulme Trust to carry out work from 2009 until the end of 2011, and could eventually result in AIKON‚ “learnin”g to draw in its own style.

The project is being co-ordinated by Professor of Computing at Goldsmiths, Frederic Fol Leymarie and Patrick Tresset, a researcher and artist who has already carried out much work in the area upon which the AIKON Project will build.

Artistic drawing has been practiced in every known civilisation for at least the last 30,000 years and sketching specifically has the particularity of showing the drawing process complete with its hesitations, errors and corrections.

The area of research has been tackled by art historians, psychologists, neuroscientists – such as Arnheim, Fry, Gombrich, Leyton, Ramachandran, Ruskin, Willats and Zeki – who have argued that artists organise their perception of the world differently.

The AIKON Project will follow two main research paths: one starts from the study of sketches in archives and notes left by artists and the other is based on contemporary scientific and technological knowledge.

AIKON

Professor Fol Leymarie explains more about the project: “Even if still partial, the accumulated knowledge about our perceptual and other neurobiological systems is advanced enough that, together with recent progress in computational hardware, computer vision and artificial intelligence, we can now try to build sophisticated computational simulations of at least some of the identifiable perceptual and cognitive processes involved in face sketching by artists.”

The most important processes to be studied and simulated within AIKON include the visual perception of the subject, and the dynamically created sketch. It will also study the representation, planning and execution of the drawing gestures; the cognitive activity of reasoning, about the percepts of the sitter and the drawing; the influence of the years of training as a form of memory, and the inter-processes information flows, with a focus on feedback mechanisms – for example when looking back at the sitter or when looking at the partial sketch already performed.

Based on earlier work and results, Frederic and Patrick are expecting AIKON to be able to draw in its own style, with the resulting system having been informed by an artist’s insights and also by past artists‚Äô left writings about their creative behaviour.

The Aikon project website