Interactive applet

I've started working on the project that hopefully will end up with an interesting interactive piece. Any programmed application can have a number of different uses, and my idea is absolutely not ground-breaking when it comes to the programming part, or the use of it for that matter. It is very much a basic idea, with a pretty common use, but that is not to say that it can't be fun or interesting. We'll see how goes. I have always been interested (at least since I learned how to incorporate video in my programming apps) in interaction. That the viewer is not merely a (passive) consumer of impressions standing in front of some piece of art. By using a camera (or some other sensing equipment) makes it possible to let the viewer participate more, and even be a vital part of the art piece. We have seen lots of examples of this already. But, even if it has been seen before, it has an almost infinte number of ways to be deployed. I will see if I can take advantage of that.

My applet is based on one of the examples in Processing, readily available for all to use, and is called "Background Subtraction." It is found under Processing --> File --> Examples --> Libraries --> Video Capture --> Background Subtracting

I have changed it alot, but it is (almost) always easier to start out with one of the examples in Processing, especially if it is very related to what you will make.

This is not a finished product by far, but it works pretty well so far. The goal was to detect motion, and to figure out _where_ in the picture this motion took place. I'm therefore collecting all the coords where changes happen, and then average those coords to one specific place. This will definitevily work best against a bright, monochromatic background, with as much contrast as possible to the moving object. I don't think that will be too hard to accomplish. I will work more on this to make the movement of the 'blob' (the averaged coords) more smooth. As for now, it always jumps to the place with most movement, and that can be rather jumpy. Here is a link to the applet itself. PS You need a video camera on your PC/mac to make this work. Also, since it involves using the camera, you need to download the file (a .zip file) and run it from your computer. This is a java mac-application. I hope it will be playable, please inform me if it does not work. The source code can also be downloaded if desired.