ROB MILLS: well yest maybe the most stressful day of my life trying to source the videos and then edit them for our project. I knew it was going to be a hard task right from the beginning when we had our initial idea..Yest was made worse by the fact nothing seemed to go our way, computers crashing and internet stopping working..

Finally finished them late last night and we are getting closer and closer to putting it all together and testing it ready for tues!!!!

JAMIE ROBERTS: nearly there

today has consisted of stress and more stress.

due to time and the fact we are not geniuses with video, the video side of the installment has been one of the hardest.

i also made the conductor wires for the top of the head today. these are scrunched up pieces of copper that will when touched by the other cooper wire will create a circuit attached to the keyboard chip board thus out putting a key.

the other conducting wire will be fed into a glove which the user will be able to put on to interact with the head

ROB MILLS: Patch time!!

ROB MILLS: Sourcing videos to use in the project, pretty much finished my patch...

Used imovie to put the videos together for each of the 4 lobes we are intending to display.

JAMIE ROBERTS: SPEAKER BRAIN!

current progress in the head department :):

speaker inserted will playing a compilation of audio from all LOBES

STEPHEN REILLY: The patch so far is coming along quite well. There is currently a four track mixer which fades in the different parts of the brain. This is hooked up to the Max's Global Transport so they mix smoothly staying in time. A drone is set up to play, when the machine is in use. Two dry/wet effects have been set up for applying the drugs effects. I am currently putting together these effects, but I will be using vst effects in Bidule as well as filters and LFO gens in Max. I will send midi Controller data from Max into Bidule. I am still working on the actual audio content.

Videos

ROB MILLS: I added the effects for the videos and added a select button and two sliders for the drugs and the amount..In my patch you can now apply the drugs and choose the amount using a slider and this then effects the videos which are selected..

The main problem was scaling the values from the slider to the effects. It took a lot of working out and  a few of the values needed to be inverse which made things worse.

As my patch is building it is also getting very messy so I have spent as lot of time tidying it up and making a presentation mode which makes using the patch much easier.

Lemur

JAMIE ROBERTS: well yesterday i finally finished programming the lemur patch. the lemur will be used as a touch interface for the drug selection process of the installation. 

initially i had a few problems with the radio button object within the lemur itself. i was having problems retrieving the values of each individual buttons.

so instead a opted to use the midiout function in max to communicate with the lemur via the Jazzdemeon MIDI input 0 and outputs 0. this allowed me to use three custom buttons and treat them as radio buttons (so when one is press the rest switch off)

i will upload some screen shots after the weekend 

P.S it would be really nice if the research studio had access to the internet

STEPHEN REILLY: The idea for the audio so far.
As soon as a user steps in front of the brain a drone will play showing that the interaction has started and the user will reveal the different parts by pressing the buttons on the model head. I will upload the drone soon, I have got a few loops off my friend Joe which are probably suitable.
I am going to arrange 4 short audio tracks to resemble the brain sections. I am going to use sampled drum beats, melodies, vocals etc. These will run continuously and quickly fade in when selected by the user.

An extra part of the interaction will show how the effect of drugs on the brain, we have decided to show the effects of cannabis and cocaine. I am currently researching these effects. So the 4 original sounds will be affected by filters, delays, wave-shaping, pitch shifting in max msp hopefully letting the user feel a grasp of the effect. There will be buttons activating these effects, which will trigger audio resembling the particular drug. There will also be an wet/dry amount to show different levels of intoxication.

Start of the max Patch

JAMIE ROBERTS: today i start programing the various control and key inputs within max.

The interface Max patch will be relatively small in design and quite simple in programming.

however it soon came to my attention there would be a few problems along the way.

1st problem to date: for each of the button that will be place on the head a bang will output within max to trigger the relevant video and audio crossfade.

however to i realized that if the user where to press down a second button while still holding the first one then let go both videos would crossfade back to the start screen thus cutting out both videos.

i struggled for while to find a solution the Rob mills came up with a system of 0 1's attached to the gate object this cut out the keyup object if another button had been pressed .

Problem solved !

 

ROB MILLS: Researched the effects of the chosen drugs on the different areas of the brain.

I then used this information to get ideas of ways i could alter/effect the video to represent these effects.

Added blur effect, colour editing and frame skipping to each video which will be triggered and the amount changed using Jamie's interface when drugs are selected.

Next main job......video sourcing....oh dear..

Meeting and ldeas

JAMIE ROBERTS: well after much head straining over the final idea we have managed to envision the final thing today. we deiced to go down the more abstract educational route (if that makes sense) rather than the straight up educational experience. this also mean our target audience has shift a few year into the adult audience.

as my role is the interface of the project my max patch is going to be quite simple however i have to learn new techniques such as soldering this could prove difficult.

i'm aiming to finish the soldering by the end of the week 

ROB MILLS: Programmed a cross-fade between four videos to be triggered externally. Boom..