Aninstalation, presenting The Animation Machine

The result of the play-testing described in the previous post confirmed our belief that we were on the right track to create a playful experience.  Not only were we enjoying the playfulness but others were also enjoying watching it and wanted to take part.  This relates nicely to a book I have been reading.

“After five hours driving over the tire-melting highway of the Nevada and Utah deserts I am beat.  My Yellow Lab, Jake, shares this emotion. He drapes across the back seat all the air let out of him…I shut down the engine and the dust cloud that has been following us blankets the car.  Then something miraculous happens. I open the door for Jake and he freezes, every sense aquifer. He instantly takes in the whole scene: A bright August day, four acres of pasture, a dozen horses, my Cousin Al, his for kids, and two dogs…In half a second Jake is flying out of the door, a blond blur zipping towards the pasture.  He races at full gallop one way and reverses, paws tearing up the dirt in the opposite direction. his mouth is agape, the corners pulled back in a canine grin…The children squealing with delight..The adults are soon whooping and running ” (Brown 2010: 3).

What we are witnessing here is the invigorating nature of play and of watching it, Stuart Brown has studied animals and people and play is important and invigurating for both. The above represents (in Roger Cailois’s terms) unstructured (Paida) play and this is what I am interested in.  The Animation Machine we have built capitalises on this.  As well as being a playful experience for the participants it is also enjoyable for the spectators.   As The Animation Machine ‘films’ a fairly large area multiple people can create different animations or combine and work together.

Rules and Mechanics

At this point I would like to make a distinction between rules and mechanics.  The Ludic activities we are setting up are unstructured but this does not mean they do not have mechanics.  Rules can be broken, mechanics can not.  The way the animation machine works is purely mechanics but there are not any rules.  This way we keep the forms of ludic activities as free as possible.

“I’ve seen a lot of designers use these words interchangeably. Personally, though, I don’t see Rules and Mechanics as the same thing. As children, we were told to “always obey the rules.” However, the rules could be bent, or even broken, if we so desired. Mechanics, on the other hand, are what make the big machine work, in this case, the game. Mechanics are the things we CAN do. Rules are the things we can’t.” (Shades of Silver Blog)2.

In this way we are interested in play rather than games. The underlying pineapple of Games is they contain rules

“Games have rules, that is perhaps the most prominent feature of games…in the previous chapter, the idea that games were ordered and structured by rules was the most common definitional element we found” (Salen et al 2004: 103)3

The Animation Machine

OK, maybe I am getting ahead of myself a little.  I think I now need to describe The Animation Machine. This automates the play testing I talked about in the previous post.  The Animation Machine consists of a digital Stills camera that is connected and controlled from a netbook via a USB Cable. This camera is pointed at a empty area where the participants can position themselves. The netbook is connected to a video projector which can project on the wall.   The Animation Machine does the following:

1. Takes a picture every 3 seconds a predetermined number of times, these pictures are downloaded onto a laptop as they are taken.
2. Turns these images into a .avi file, a video file.
3. Plays the video via the video projector.
4. goes back to step 1.

This way the Animation Machine caries taking pictures, making a move and playing it in a loop until it is turned off, automating the process.

The Hardware

Camera and Wide Angle Lens

The camera is a Canon Powershot S2 IS.  Researching what type of camera is needed I found that we did not need a very high resolution one.  Fill HD video is 1920 by 1080 so this is only Just over 2 mega-pixels (MP).  I had decided to use gphoto2 (see below) to control the camera and there were only certain cameras that can be fully controlled from this software (Canon seem to of done something with there later models which stop gphoto2 working with them).  The Powershot is 5MP, can be controlled by gphoto2, is small and a used one can be got for around £50.

We also decided that it would be good to have a wide angle lens so the area that is being filmed could be maximised.  I found a good quality Wide Angle Lens of Ebay for under £20.

Netbook

As we wanted the whole thing to be portable I used a netbook running the Ubuntu Linux operating system.  This is open source and very reliable.  All the software we wanted to use was readily available and free.

Video Projector

As we wished to project the images we used a smallish video projector.  This was something I already had.

Casing

As we wanted The Animation Machine to be seen as a single unit we wanted to build it into a casing.  The initial version used a banana box with holes for Camera and Projector lens. The video projector vented hot air forward so we simply made the hole bigger to stop it overheating.

The Software

BASH Script

We decided to use a BASH script to call each program and create an infatuate loop.  The script simply contains calls to a number of programs.  The script will be walked through below.

Gphoto2

This software is used to control the camera.  We experimented with getting it to take a series of images and downloading them all to the Netbook but decided to get gphoto2 to take a picture and download each in turn as it was technically easier.  The gphoto2 command we uses was:

gphoto2 --capture-image-and-download --filename $NAME.jpg

This worked well and took around 3 seconds.

$NAME is a variable that is defined so each image has a unique and name.  The name the Julian second.  Julian Day is used in astronomy to denote the number of days since January 1, 4713 BC Greenwich noon.  Julian seconds gives the seconds since then and acts as a counter which increments every second (and is sequential).  The following command is used to define the $NAME:

NAME=pic`date +%s`.jpg

This uses the Linux date command to read the Julian seconds, prefix it with ‘pic’, suffix it with ‘.jpg’ and assign it to the variable NAME.

Memcoder

Memcoder allows a series of images files to be combined into a video file.  It allows the frame-rate and resolution of the video to be defines.  The command line we used for this is:

mencoder "mf://*.jpg" -mf fps=$FPS:type=jpg -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=$VCODEC -vf scale=$SIZE -oac copy -o $AVI

There are a number of variables that are used in this command, they are defined at the beginning of the script.  The values we use are:

• AVI=`date +%s`.avi

• FPS=10

• SIZE='1280:960'

• PHOTO_COUNTER=60

• VCODEC='mpeg4:mbd=2:trell:vbitrate=7000'

AVI is used to give the video file a name, this is done is a similar way to NAME above using Julian seconds. FPC is frames per second, SIZE is the resolution of the video and the VCODEC tells memcoder how to encode the video.

Mplayer

mplayer is used to play the move when it has been assembled.

mplayer -fs $AVI

-fs stands for full screen.

Brief look at playfulness

To look at how and why The Animation Machine is playful  I will first outline it using the Roger Caillious framework.  My initial thoughts were that we were dealing with velocity based play and this is certainly true but further thinking leads me to conclude we are actually dealing with 4 in his framework.

• velocity, there is certainly a element of velocity in the animation machine.  The creating of the animation is a movement based activity.  The participants can place them selves carefully or run around in a ‘playful’ manor.
• simulation, as the participants are animation themselves they can use the Machine to create a simulation of the real world.  This tends to be a stylised hyperreal version but can often be based on trying to simulate real movements.
• chance, creating the animations is a bit hit and miss, especially when multiple people are trying to position themselves even when trying to create a predetermined animation sequence. It is also possible to simply move around and let chance take it toll.
• competition, this is the least prevalent and obvious one.  The trying to create a predetermined sequence can be seen as competing with ones self to create the best sequence.  In a way I take composition to also mean skill in general and in this context it certainly exists.  It is also possible for different groups or individuals to compete to create the most interesting, or even playful animation.

Almost There

So far we have created the animation machine and been playfully wit tit ourselves.  The next steps are:

• To build a more interesting housing.  The current box serves its purpose but a large paper-machay SLR camera is being built to house it.
• To add audio.  This is both in terms of a loud camera click so users can tell when the picture is taken and possibly a set of sound-scapes to see how people react.

References

1. Brown,Stuart 2010,Play,How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination,and Invigorates the Soul, Lindon,Penguin
2. Silverstein,Dan2008ShadesofSilverBlog,http://dsilvers.wordpress.com/2008/04/21/mechanics-vs-rules/consulted23/11/2011
3. Salen & Zimmerman 2004 Rules on Play, Massachusetts , MIT Press