Brilliant example on setting and controlling a filter’s parameters via MIDI mapping, creating a control surface via a webcam and a torch by Daniele Mattei (Youtube). News via blog.lecollagiste.com
Daniele Comments:
I realised a little Processing sketch that tracks the light blob I shot in front of webcam, normalises X and Y coordinates to MIDI acceptable values, and then sends them to a filter effect in Ableton Live.
I also realised the little control panel that allows to correctly make the MIDI mapping and set some blob detection’s params.
Before I proceed with this post, I would like to put a few acknowledgements and small history path of events that have lead me onto this exploration. Just over a month ago, I have come across Animata – open source real-time animation software, designed to create animations, interactive background projections for concerts, theatre and dance performances. My excitement of discovery lead me to share the news with my good friends at Create Digital Motion (Peter Kirn and Jaymis Loveday) who have followed up with 3D Animation, Made Real-Time: Open-Source Animata for Mac, Windows post. That same CDM post was shortly found by Michael Forrest who blogged about that discovery on his Homebrew Adventures post as seen below.
Sometimes the software you can buy isn’t enough. I spent a few years playing in bands and always wanted to use samples to bring some more life into the sound. But it always felt so disembodied and strange to have sounds coming from nowhere when it was obvious what was coming from the guitars or drums. So I conceived this idea of a ‘virtual band’. This would give form to the weird and wonderful sounds possible through audio synthesis and processing, and could inject a lot of interest into live performances. Over the years I have tried to realise this vision in many different ways. I’ve created models with Poser and 3DS Max, I’ve written MIDI responsive software in Director, I’ve made sample players in Flash, but there was always too much latency, or 3D modelling, or rendering or… well … non-realtime problems, and I always ended up putting the idea on the back burner. Then, a couple of weeks ago, Create Digital Motion blogged about Animata. An open source animation tool with a really simple concept at its core, and the ability to do exactly what I’ve wanted to do all these years, with a fast workflow, flexibly, and in realtime. So I got to work.