Virtual Marionette

Yesterday (29 September.2010) we lost a great friend and a puppet master. One of the greatest reference for this work.

Someone who kept alive the tradition of Portuguese Puppets “Teatro Dom Roberto” and at the same time someone who innovate the art of the marionettes. He also created some of  the greatest puppet television series like: “Árvore dos Patafúrdios” or “Os Amigos de Gaspar”.

I worked with him at Teatro de Marionetas do Porto for “bichos do Bosque”, and was working for them at this time…..

I´ll dedicate this work to you João Paulo.

«É essa marioneta mediadora que, liberta dos constrangimentos funcionais do corpo humano, na forma e no espírito, nos permite com uma enorme liberdade insuflar sinais de vida à própria matéria dos sonhos, aos devaneios mais surreais. Assim entramos numa nova dimensão do jogo teatral e jogamos com prazer o jogo das impossibilidades.»

João Paulo Seara Cardoso, in “Maravilhas teatrais voadoras”, escritos, www.marionetasdoporto.pt

using Arduino as Interface

ARDUINO + MAXMSP + MODUL8 = REAL-TIME MANIPULATION / ANIMATION

arduino

Low budget solution for real-time manipulation for live performance contents.
Using some analog knobs connected to a Arduino board that communicates to MaxMsp witch translates the data to Midi messages mapping those to functions in Modul8.

2010, video example of real-time manipulation

download video at full size (720×576 – 68Mbytes) arduino

or view the stream version above

Video Demonstration

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Present at 1ª Edition of GetSetArt Festival.

Conference with Multitouch-barcelona discusting interaction design.
Learn something important about real interaction, with touch, with feeling….witch happens when giving life to a puppet.

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In this section i will present some of the prototype applications build for the project.
The main ideia is to experiment different kinds of marionettes with different aesthetics and different methods of manipulation.

The goal is to build several puppet tools, from the simpler to the most complex prototype with different interfaces, graphic engines, physic engines, and so on.
Testing this tools with different audience/users will be the main target to achieve some conclusions about the way to manipulate puppets in realtime.

Animatic was the first project build for the Masters program in Multimedia at FEUP.

A Virtual puppets system with special focus in the puppeteering art using several ways of interaction as a way to recreate the diferent styles of puppetry, including marionettes and rod puppets.

The main goals of this project are:
– To demonstrate the potential of real-time animation based interfacesß using serveal ways of interaction;
– To open the use of virtual puppetry systems in different areas like in education, performing arts, realtime television programs and even in film animation.

The system makes use of interfaces such as the microphone to create facial expressions, body language or the use of interfaces as the WIImote (WII remote control). The prototype demonstrates the capabilites of this project in commercial and artistics areas, envision a new way of looking at animation in real time.

9 and 10 of October been in a multitouch workshop with Tiago Serra in Audiência Zero in Porto.

in 2007 i was trying to build a multi-touch interface with just one camera to use in Animatic prototype, using Macromedia Director and WebXtra to track blobs in realtime.

I was in the wrong direction, i didnt want to use any surface, just the hands and gestures like the Microsoft Kinetic project that will be released this year. Very diffucult to achieve in those days, without a team and resources.

This workshop was very important to me to turn on some lights that were turned off some years ago.
Tiago Serra is doing a very great job and expanding the idea that is possible to anyone is capable of building a multi-touch interface.

I’m going to explore the multi-touch interface to control the puppets.

Virtual Puppets

animatic

Animatic – realtime puppet animation

A Virtual puppets system with special focus in the puppeteering art using several ways of interaction as a way to recreate the diferent styles of puppetry, including marionettes and rod puppets.

Video demonstration

INTERFACE: Wiimote, microphone, gamepad, keyboard, mouse

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