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Interactive Coding
More <Preliminary Designs <Digital Animation <Interface Design >Sound Design >Installation
All coding for The Body Malleable was done by Casey Rice via a Max patch Casey wrote to implement the interactivity. Early tests indicated that with an appropriately-set screen refresh-rate, a sequence of stored images in a variety of compressed formats could simulate animation at variable speeds as directed by an external controller. The functionality of Casey's MAX patch with the i-Cube configuration proved very stable and accurate. Again the process and effect required was simple - to simply have the finger movement inside the orifice's colon-chamber scrub back-and-forth a series of stored Quicktime frames - but the authoring and coding neccesitated a lot of tweaking in relation to the physicality of the internal mechanisms of the pod interface - how smoothly the fader travelled, how hard one's finger pushed at the end of the colon, how long before a sequence was switched when once removed one's finger from the orifice, etc.
This process entailed a major revision and modification to the various ‘patches’ (custom programmed/coded directives and actions authored in MAX) which Casey had first assembled for testing purposes. IT was through this part of the project that a greater realization as to how to move from sequence to sequence was gained, which consequently determined modifications to the internal mechanisms off the physical interface. With these changes in place, a near-to-final MAX patch was developed. As more sequences were added, this patch was further modified to achieve greatest flexibility in movement and stability and evenness through each sequence. Finally, a special self-calibrating function was written to allow for changes in tension of the physical interface’s internal mechanisms across a day’s use.
Casey’s early findings on the instability of the data being sent from the fader to the I-Cube were the primary and initial means by which problems were located in the pod’s internal mechanics. While up to this point, the feeling and motion of the user’s finger inside the pod orifice was agreeable and acceptable, it was not until serious MAX coding was undertaken that problems became evident. The ‘slop’ or sway in the various pressure points inside the Physical Interface and how its components connected to the fader needed to be altered in order for a consistent flow of data to be sent from the fader to the I-Cube unit.
Following Anthony Kitchener’s proposed re-design, Casey was able to rewrite the MAX coding. This became a very involved process, as Casey had to author a series of text-patches to figure out the best way to deal with the incoming signals from the hall switchers as well as how the fixed distance between the start-point of the fader the end-point of the fader could be recalculated to match the many differing number of frames in each animation sequence. Once the new Physical Interface’s internal mechanics were completed as a prototype, Casey was able to focus on the suitable MAX patches for the interaction between fader, I-Cube and the animation sequences.
Following an assessment of how the newly authored MAX module handled the animation sequences, testing was carried out to see how the MAX coding handled the MIDI data. Following the securement of an exhibition for THE BODY MALLEABLE @ ACMI, discussion centered on appropriate ways to run the interactive in such an environment. After numerous meetings with ACMI technical staff, it was agreed that (a) the Physical Interface should not require any manual calibration (as we had employed up this point); and (b) a complete self-start-up sequence should be enabled as part of the MAX module coding. Casey undertook the writing of this code in his studio and onsite at ACMI. This involved quite extensive modifications to the MAX module.
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