The Showcase...

Well, that was a long day!  I think in review, we have to say that the day went really well.  We got some great feedback from Tutors and students alike and it was nice to see Paul Emery, Paul Thompson and Simon Thomson all really like it (At least i think they did!)  Not only did we get some nice comments we also got another contact who is interested in taking the product to their school in Middlesbrough.  This is really encouraging and is something to talk about in the presentation.

As far as the presentation goes we are going through all the material tomorrow and running through it several times so we are really up for it come friday.

Nearly there guys...

Review of the 'DVD' weekend...

Over the weekend Jon D and Jon C worked on the DVD.  As predicted Adobe Encore CS3 gave us quite a few scares but we got through them in the end.  We ran into the problems with regards to getting the footage into the project but they were overcame through creating a new timeline and dragging in the footage separately.  It took all of Sunday, literally! And the best part of Monday.  I then burnt ten DVDs thinking I had ironed out all of the problems only to find that I had overlooked the Menu authoring which I checked a few weeks ago.  I discovered that they weren't looping due to the Overrides i had set up.  So a few more hours were spent ironing out all of these and a second lot of DVDs were then burnt.  The only positive to come out of the whole thing is that I now have lots to talk about it the Report with regards to problem solving!

Review of the week commencing May 4th...

Just thought I'd do a review of the week.

Monday

Today both Jons went through all the raw footage and exported onto the computer.  This took quite a lot longer than we first expected.  With this footage on the computer we could begin editing it further in preperation for the DVD.

Tuesday

Today work was divided between working on the promotional posters, hand-outs and fold-out guides.  Some extra footage was captured of the new colour-tracking system which gareth had been working on.  With all the footage tied up editing could begin in earnest.  Jon C worked pretty late on all the hand-outs and things, ready to print the following day.

Wednesday

Today was spent printing out the posters and other promotional stuff.  whilst Jon, Gareth and Tom were doing this Jon D was busy editing the footage.  Later n the afternoon Jon C began the arduous task of putting together all the promotional stuff, cutting and sticking, etc.  Gareth and Tom continued to work on the website, adding more content and making it look nicer.

Thursday

Today was more of the same, more posters needed to be printed out as Jon C managed to much up the mounting!  Jon D continued working on the DVD content and Gareth and Tom carried on working on the website.  Jon d worked well into the night on the DVD content so respect needs to paid his way! Hats off and all that...

Friday

Sorry to sound like a broken record but today followed a very similar pattern to the last.  The website is almost there and just needs video elements added to it.  Both Jons worked well into the night once more, working on the DVD.  The footage is about 80% there so hopefully we can meet up on sunday and finish it all.

Jon C is buying blank printable DVDs, more ink for printing and DVD cases on Saturday.  So, hopefully we can meet up on sunday afternoon and sort the rest of it out.

Pretty much finished the patch

Today I've been sorting the final touches to the patch, ironing out bugs throughout the whole system and making the audio a bit more exciting. There is still a lot more that could be done but I'll see what you think tomorrow as I really really really need to start working on the report and put the audio patch down as it's really taking control of my life. Some samples could however do with mixing but it would take an age to get it working to a reasonable standard so may reconsider that once I get going with the report so it's ready for the final presentation next Friday.

Any road I'm waffling now...

I've also put the colour tracking system into a patch so there are now two different patches "Welcome to SeeZen WiiMote" and "Welcome to SeeZen Colour Tracking". It is basically a stripped version of the Wii Interactivity. Features include - Video Crossfading, Video Rotation, Video Zoom (or whatever it is) Interactive audio pan and Interactive sample playing. I'll demonstrate it tomorrow as there is a lot to explain.

Thats all guys

Gareth's Work this Weekend

First of all I've put the SeeZen website online, I've not touched it in ages and looking back it's pretty ugly so if there is anything that anyone would like changing I'll be more than happy to. You will be able to find it at www.garethmead.com/seezen/ (it's obviously nowhere near finished but shouldn't take too long)

Working on the colour tracking
I came across a Jitter tutorial for colour tracking which I've tweaked to suit interaction from the webcam on my computer. It seems to work really well with blue paper and at long distance gives plenty of scope for movement and therefore increased interactivity. This would be a great addition as an extended method of interactivity as the ability to tweak the numbers to match pretty much any physical ability and get a wide range of values, making it possible for even the smallest movement to have a large impact to what happens on screen. I've not yet implemented this into the system as I've been focussing my attention more on the audio system and rebuilding the sample players...

Work on the audio system
As we have been working through the project this week we've all addressed a few small issues with the audio system, specially the amount of samples sat in the RAM which may only play for a few seconds over a 10 minute session. This is obviously quite wasteful of the resources so I've built a completely new system to eliminate this happening. It works by simply loading in the samples as they are needed. Both the interactive and ambient elements have 4 temporary sample players where samples are dynamically loaded and cleared as and when necessary.

In addition to this there were a few issues with some samples which were set as interactive sounds but would probably work better as ambiences and vice versa. Those changes will be made tomorrow.

I'm also not keen on the way the samples play for only five seconds and fade out leaving some gaps in the overall ambient texture to the sound. Again this will be hopefully sorted by tomorrow and make the audio sound and feel a lot more natural.

Thats pretty much everything I plan to do for the audio system, other parts may include trying to eliminate some crackles if I can understand where they come from and pairing ambient samples together for a stereo image. Such as if waves1 plays waves2 is forced to play too and they interactively pan around each other. It can be done I just need to get my head around how it might work in my new system.

Thats all for now folks.

Monday 4th April

Today both Jons have gone through all the footage we have collected over the last weeks, exporting it onto the computer.  It all looks great, but will obviously need some editing. Unfortunately some of the audio is a bit poor but we can have a stab at editing it with Audition.  Tonight Jon D is going to go through all the photos, editing the colours and exporting them as tiffs.  Jon C is going to work on the fold-out hand outs.  Tomorrow we aim to finish the posters, ready to print in the evening as they take three days to print.

A Review of Week Commencing 27th April...

Last week was the toughest yet! The group turned in some serious hours and completed a lot of work in the process. Here is a review of the week day by day.

Monday 27th April

This day was our first at Lumen Exhibition Space. We got our head around the space, the set-up and equipment we had access to.  It took us more time than we would of liked to get used to the projector, and setting the colour up correctly.  Once this was completed we got on with the tasks that we had arranged to complete during our stay there.  This consisted of integrating the two systems and working how the audio would complement the visuals.  All of the Max work for the day was spent on this task.  As well as this we began documenting the installation and our work for the DVD and promotional material.  This included time-lapses of us setting up and down, carrying out the work and the visuals.  Once we had finished at Lumen other activities were carried on separately at home.  Jon D worked out which audio samples would play with which videos.  Gareth worked on the foundations of the interactivity side of things and getting the wiimote to work effectively with the Mac. Finally Jon C worked on promotional material, including info sheets to hand out to the school, and t-shirt designs.

Tuesday 28th April

This day was almost a copy of the previous with almost all the time devoted to calibrating the audio with the visuals and creating a system which would allow them both to be used together.  Tentative efforts were made with regards to the interactive nature of the installation but the majority of the time was spent integrating the two systems.  Once we had completed our day at Lumen more tasks were completed separately at home.  Jon C mixed music for each season which we could choose to play or not depending on what the user wanted.  This was the same music as the DVD but with the ambience's removed.  Jon D worked on the visual patch, working out how to make the visuals merge more smoothly and the boundary mode.  Gareth continued to work on the interactivity side of things and also making the ambience's work more smoothly and sporadically to achieve a more natural sound.

Wednesday 29th April

This day was long and intensive! Our time at Lumen was dedicated to making the patch interactive.  With the audio and visuals working nicely with each other would could concentrate on the interactivity.  We created the basics of our system deciding what actions and buttons would control what.  As well as working on the wiimote system we worked on the infrared system with our newly purchased infrared illuminator.  These tests were unsuccessful and ultimately fruitless.  Whilst these tests were being carried out Jon C worked on the info sheet and questionnaire which would be handed out at the school the following day.  Once our day at Lumen was complete we travelled back to uni where we printed off the info sheets.  Once this was done Jon C, Gareth and Tom travelled over to Halfords to get reflective tape and stickers!  We then travelled back to Jon C's house and worked on the interactivity which carried on into the early hours of the morning.  By the end of the day we were we needed to be but only just!

Thursday 30th April

Today we travelled to the Dales School and tested our product with the children. We documented the whole day with video and photos including the product in action with the children and an interview with Alayene, the head teacher.  We also recorded a review of the day after in a pub on the way home.  Overall it was a long day but well worth it.  We were all a little quiet on the way home but i think that was due to how tired we all were after the previous days work.

Friday 1st May

This was our final day at Lumen Exhibition Space.  The day was devoted to filming the product in action and various demonstration videos.  This day was a little shorter than the others as we had flogged ourselves during the week. 

Over the weekend Jon C worked on some of the hand-outs and Gareth worked on a light-sensing interface which we could use instead of the wiimote system alone.  Overall i think we earned a well earned rest as we are on track with what we need to achieve.

A Review of the last week...

This week has been quite intensive! I thought I'd run through what we managed to get through from Tuesday onwards:

Tuesday

We travelled to The Dales School in Northallerton to check out what equipment they have, he space we'd be using and the children we would be testing the product on.  We discussed several things with Mike Sissons who is our contact there and it helped us shape the design of the product for when we go back next thursday.

Wednesday

This day the group worked separately. I worked on my Final Project Report which is proving to be very difficult and will take quite some time to finish.

Thursday

The group worked together from 10-6 at my house.  We worked on the visual and audio patches, and tested the wii remote on my mac.  Through working on the patches we could begin to see how memory intensive they were on the mac and design solutions accordingly.  I also worked on the DVD menu and that is now finished, ready for the actual content.  I also design the fold-out business card leaflet.

Friday

On friday we intended to work in a similar way to the previous day but unfortunately Gareth was ill so we had to occupy our time with other things. We managed to work on the visuals a little more and filmed Jon D discussing his patches and how the visual system works.

Saturday

Day off!

Sunday

Today Gareth and Jon D worked on their individual patches and began integrating them. Jon C joined up later work continued until 7 working on bringing the systems together.  Tentative work began on using the wii remote with the systems.  We aim to buy the reflective tape on wednesday and will order an infrared light bank on monday morning.

We are slightly behind schedule and the coming week will be very intensive as we expected and planned.  Monday and Tuesday will be spent working on the patch and filming it in action in the exhibition space.  Wednesday will be spent buying what we need to make the glove interface working and finishing the patch and preparing for The Dales School Visit the following day.  Thursday will be dedicated to filming the product in action at the school. From Friday onwards we will be editing the footage we have gathered and putting the DVD together. 

Monday 20th April...

Today Gareth, Tom and myself had a short meeting, here is what we discussed:

• We went through what we had been up to individually and agreed that we are roughly on track as far as the group plan goes.
• This week we will focus on tying together both the audio and visual patches and the interactivity side of things.
• The installation needs to be 90% complete for next Monday as we are in the exhibition space.
• We need to talk to Kingsley Ash with regards the video pools and Paul Emery to firm up what we actually need to do with regards to the exhibition space.
• We put together some questions which we intend to ask Mike Sissons at The Dales School when we go tomorrow; leaving at 11am by the way.

After this meeting I worked on the DVD. I have created Gareth and Tom's contact sub-menus and authored all of the elements.  Everything is working fine, and sounds and looks good.  However the transitions between the Main Menu and the Main Contact Menu aren't correct.  They are missing the 'Back to Main Menu' button so when the Contact menu loads this button suddenly appears. So, your going to need to export these again Jon, Sorry! I'll show you what i mean tomorrow.

Cheers Guys, 

Jon

My Contribution during 2nd Week of Easter

During the second week of the Easter break my contribution closely followed what I had planned.  I spent the best part of two days supporting Jon by cutting up the raw footage he had gathered over the entire project to date.  This entailed using Premiere Pro to cut up the footage into manageable sizes.  Once this had been completed I then colour corrected any footage that suffered from poor light, etc.  I also sped up and slowed down footage respectively to give us a deeper and varied pool of footage.  I then compressed all the files using H.264 to bring down the file sizes and help use manage the files when used in the Max patch.

As well as this i finished the DVD music, creating six different pieces of music to be used for the different menus.  I also intend to create a longer piece of music for the actual content on he DVD.  The music includes Acoustic guitars, Piano, Keyboards, site-recordings and my Kontakt work.

Finally I created another Kontakt Instrument which creates abstract winter sounds including crystals, and organic growth sounds.  Snow and Ice doesn't really make any sound naturally so it has allowed me to create something more surreal.

Editing the samples

Today I've spent some time editing the samples. Well mainly just downsampling them to make the file sizes smaller. Some files were 32 bit and 44.1 kHz which made them a lot larger than necessary with relation to their frequency content. Tom has been busy away doing the same today. There is still a lot of editing to do and plenty to do before I can make any use of them in Max but its definitely getting there and I think with the correct documentation I should be able to have the system built up in a couple of days (I'll explain the documentation in the next paragraph). A folder of samples that was 450mb is now around a third of that at 150mb with not much noticable difference in the audible quality of the samples.

I mentioned documentation for implementing the samples which sounds a bit odd but is really quite useful. I've come up with a method of building the system up really quickly before even putting it into Max. Basically I've set up a set of tables in Excel with info on the object name and any arguments. This makes it so much quicker implementing into Max as I can just copy and paste all the relevant info in a new object and everything we need is there. Also in the table theres info on each individual sample such as its length, whether its a looped ambience or interactive element and whether it requires fixed or random volume and pitch.

Right I've written enough and probably made no sense in the last paragraph. I get it so thats what counts I guess.

Cheers guys

Audio Patch

Hi chaps,

Everything sounds to be going well with the promotional side of things. Sorry to hear about your Grandad J to the D!

I've spent some time today trying to get some samples into the system. As it currently stand there are 104 samples in which 10 samples load every half a second. On my computer which admittedly isn't the best it pretty much kills it, this is mainly due to the samples altogether working out at around 660mb. I can reduce this quite a lot by downsampling all the samples which don't contain much high frequency content.

As you all probably know the hearing range of a human being (us mere mortals) is around 20kHz. The Nyquist sampling theorem states that you need to sample at twice the hearing rate to eliminate aliasing and artefacts within the sounds. That means if the sound of a bird chirping is around 8kHz we can sample it at 16kHz therefore reducing the size of the file by nearly a third and not killing my poor computer along the way. Max will recognise this as a 16kHz sample and play it back through the soundcard at the correct speed.

There are also a lot of samples which I can cut down further to make the ambiences more random to use the samples in quite a dynamic way and also give me more marks for my use of interactive audio principles. Well thats my theory anyway. Plus again my computer will probably crack a smile at my generousity!

In terms of interactivity I've not done a lot, mainly because I've been in the Paris celebrating my ripening. Thats actually the least of my worries at the moment. I'm quite optimistic about it and if we can't get multi point interactivity working we can easily solve the issue by parameters relating to the speed of peoples movements playing back more sounds and creating a deeper sound than if the user was moving slowly, setting a more relaxed scene.

Any road, if you haven't already put your pyjamas on and made a hot chocolate for bed I've probably made you resort to it by now. My god I can chat on and on and on.

And yes Jon to the D I can help you with the visuals when we next meet to integrate the whole shazam together. Friday may be good for me, but that depends on everyone else too. Bit of a bugger that I'm occupied on Wednesday and Thursday... Long story!

Thank you for reading this far

Gaz

DVD Music...

Hi Guys,

I've spent most of the day working on the music. Its a simple chord progression which I have layered up with loads of different instruments. Basically my idea is to arrange four different pieces of music using the same motif but with different instrumentation. Each piece of music will have a bed of site recording and will represent the different seasons. Im going to do a longer piece which flows from one to the next. We can then use these for the different DVD menus, slideshows and bed music for the making of documentary.

Could you e-mail me all of your student e-mails, and possibly a mugshot and four titles which you'd describe yourself as. Its for the DVD, we've each got our own contact page so people can get in touch with us. Also when you send me a photo of yourself can you wear a white-shirt and stand in front of something plain.  Its so we can all look uniform. If you need guidance for your descriptive titles I've put: Sound Design, Digital Illustration, Site-Recording and DVD construction.  Cheers Guys

Ps...

Good work on the T-Shirts Tom.

See you tomorrow Jono.

T-shirts

Just to let you know that the t-shirts are all printed with not much hassle really so that is good. Alot of time on the iron(mum did help) I found some cheap printing stuff so that was a massive bonus. I am coming back up on Wed to finnish the editing cutting up some of the samples a lot shorter for Gaz to use. The labels for the tins will be ready on tue and i might pop back home on friday and put the labels on and put the t-shirts in them so they are pretty much ready.
Sounds really good about the music, i look forward to listening to it

Tom

Bad news fellas...

Hello all

hope you are all having a good easter?

Unfortunately (believe this or not) my grandad passed away this week. So i haven't been as productive as i had initially intended. The Jitter patch is getting there, but i would really like to sit down with you gaz and try iron it out because we still dont know what controls we are using and stuff.

Im planning to come back on Monday as planned, but will have to return home on the following weekend for the funeral on Monday. Ill then be back in Leeds on Tuesday. It has just occurred to me that this is the day we are due at the school for our recce. Ill do my best to get back in time for this but hopefully you guys will understand.

Jon ill give you a ring when i get back to leeds on monday.

Hope you're all well.

J

Thursday 9th April....

Hi guys,

Over the last few days I've managed to create all of the DVD menus, the copyright video, dvd cover, dvd disc design and I've started the dvd music.

The music is a soothing acoustic, piano thing at the moment. I think I'll add some keys and some of the site recordings. Then we can cut it up and use it as we wish.  We can use it as an underbed for some of the filming too.

Im going to take a few days off now so speak to you next week.

Have a good Easter,

Jon

Monday, 6th April

Today I have completed the majority of the menu system which will make up the Promotional DVD.  I still need to iron a few things out though and i hope to do that tomorrow.  I also created a flow chart and an asset list so Jon D will know what he needs to create when it comes to next week.

I will try and put up some pictures of what I've created so you can get an idea of what the DVD will look like. 

Jon

Week 6 in Review...

I thought I'd review week 6.  We carried out our Work In-Progress Presentation on Monday of week 6.  Although we put a fair bit of planning into it things didn't really go to plan and we suffered some technical issues.  Although we got quite negative feedback for the presentation our actual product was praised so we were left with mixed feelings.

I Had quite a bad time with illness this week and thus didn't complete as much as i would of liked.  Most of my time was spent completing the final application to MetSpace and amending my initial plan.

We managed to have a group meeting before we all left for the Easter break.  Here is what it consisted of:

• Both Jons discussed the creation of the promotional DVD and a plan was negotiated so we could carry out the work over the break.
• Jon C will create all the menus, music, copyright video, flow chart, asset list, DVD cover and a disc design.
• Jon D will create all the transitions and video elements such as editing the gathered footage, making of documentary and slide show.
• Gareth and Jon D are planning to have both the visual and audio elements finished so they can be brought together in the first week back from the break.
• Tom will sort out the promotional material he has been working on for the last few weeks such as the tins and t-shirts.

Friday 27th March, Jon's Place again...

Today's activities:

• I spent the morning creating an instrument in Kontakt which creates a realistic thunder sound.  I also started work on an organic ice sound which i will hopefully complete over the weekend.
• Jon and Gareth spoke to Kingsley Ash about the visuals and got a little further with the L-system patch.  Jon also demonstrated his other visual patch.
• Some more amendments were made to the presentation and videos were added.  We also talked through the structure of the presentation and agreed to meet at nine on monday ready for our time slot at half nine. 

Thursday 26th March, Jon's Place...

Today the group got together to work collectively on a few things, this included:

1. Working on the Work In-Progress presentation in PowerPoint, constructing the slides and ordering who would talk and about what.
2. Completing the content for the presentation including filming of Gareth demonstrating the audio ambience's merging one to another.
3. Jon C will create a further two instruments in Kontakt to be included with the others which have been created to demonstrate 'live' in the presentation.  These will include thunder sounds and 'organic growing ice sounds.'
4. A basic tin design has been created for the prototype tin which will be presented at the presentation.
5. Jon D is still struggling with the visual side of things and will meet Kingsley Ash with Gareth tomorrow to discuss other avenues.
6. Gareth is going to go to Maplin to buy the LED device we need to create the glove interface.
7. We are meeting tomorrow afternoon to prepare and finalize the presentation.

My activities

Here is what i have been up to recently...

- I have archieved the footage we took during our visits and the Kontakt map demos (Jon i still need those screen grab movies)

- Putting together a little montage of footage to show during the presentation.

- Workin through Jitter tutorials and trying to find objects in there that will be of use.

- Contacted Jer Thorpe about the possibility of gettin his Processing code (still no reply)

- Paul Emery still hasnt got back to me so ill be tryin to get hold of him today. Need to speak to him about the possibility of using video files as opposed to Jitter patches etc.

- Meetin Kingsly Ash on Friday (27th) about the GL libraries in Jitter and trying to get my head round those.

Hope you're all good.

J

Great News Guys...

Hi guys,

Just thought I'd let you know what the situation is with visits and filming when we get back from Easter.  The Lumen exhibition space is confirmed, we have the space on Monday 27th and Tuesday 28th April.  Even better, the Dales School has confirmed we can go in and film it in action there with some children.  We have been given the chance to go in a view the space they have and discuss what the procedure will be.  Thats on Tuesday 21st April at 1.30pm.  We then go back on Thursday 30th April to actually set it up and film it in action!

So, we definitely need a camera, mic and minidisc recorder for the week commencing 27th April so we can film it and record interview feedback.  Also a projector, screen, speakers, audio interface and pc/mac for the installation itself.  I can provide the speakers, audio interface and mac if we need it.  I'll chase up my friend Dave about a projector in case we can't source one from Uni.  I can see the mic, minidisc recorder and camera being in great demand at that point too so sourcing some alternatives could be beneficial.

I'm going to get back to creating insect sounds.  Im working on BumbleBee sounds! Bzzzzzz

What I've been up to so far this week...

Just thought I'd pt up what I've been up to over the last few days.

• I've completed two instruments in Kontakt which create realistic rain and wind sounds for the colder seasons in the piece.
• I've started work on another instrument which will create realistic insect sounds for the summer seasons. These raw recordings include de-tuned violin strings for bees, blowing pipes for crickets, and rattling snare drums for swarming sounds.
• These will all be edited and processed in Kontakt.
• I aim to create instruments which will create thunder and lightning sounds and 'wintery' sounds.
• I have been in touch with a contact at 'The Dales School' in North Yorkshire with the view to going in and filming the product in action with users of different learning difficulties.
• I am confirming this with them tomorrow but it looks all but certain that we will have the go ahead to do this.
• The exhibition space at Lumen has been confirmed for the 27th and 28th of April, i will look to get the school session after this date.

The past few days and the audio patch

Over the past couple of days I've been working on the Audio patch for the See Zen system and carrying out more tests with the Wii Remote of which still I'm only getting it to do basic tasks as my attention has been focussed more in getting the audio systems ready to implement the samples.

Yesterday I build a 'core' sample player which should save a lot of time implementing samples into the system. This allows the sample to be stopped and played back from the beginning, stopped and played back from the last position so in effect a pause function, varied pitch and volume, panning and loop on/off. The sample can also be routed to any audio effect within the system making it very flexible to use and increase the speed of implementing the sounds massively.

I also realised that I'd not created an audio envelope so I've created a very simple ADSR function which works quite nicely. All of these systems have been build to try and have similar functionality to Native Instruments Kontakt. The benefit of building our own systems as opposed to using Kontakts built in systems that the opportunities are almost limitless and offers a variety of options for real time modulation, overall making the sytem much more interactive and exciting and hopefully not causing too much load on the poor old CPU (we will cross our fingers).

What have I been doing over the last few weeks

Well I seem to have already neglected this blog site so think I best get my act together with it.

I have been recently working in MaxMSP building all the systems ready for the audio elements of the project. This has included;

Building simple, yet effective DSP effects, including filters, reverbs, delays and an interesting stutter patch which may not have any relevance but may create some interesting results. These are still in very basic form but are ready to be developed further once tests have been made with the samples which we are using which Jon and Tom have both been hard at work editing.

As well as the effects I have set up a variety of sample and loop players, some adding variation to pitch and volume everytime the sample is played back. This is a development of work I completed in previous university modules, as is quite a lot of work I have completed so far. In addition to this I want to create a system where effects parameters modulate themselves randomly for some ambient sounds. My vision of the ambiences is that they sit back and set the scene while more obvious sounds like birds singing become the interactive elements. This will be up for discussion on Monday when we meet again and hopefully have the samples fully integrated.

I've also been looking into ways in which the user may interact with the system and the Wii remote is becoming more and more promising. I've been in touch with a second year student with recommendation from Bal Singh but think I've found all the answers I've been looking for on Jonny Lee's website (http://johnnylee.net/projects/wii/). The top video is a perfect starting point. Hopefully the techniques he uses can be translated into MaxMSP and the See Zen project quite seamlessly.

So far I have purchased one IR LED (you owe me 20p guys!) to run tests with the Wii Mote. If all runs smoothly I will go ahead and purchase an IR Illuminator (http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=225027) or something similar which the remote can sit between.

I think thats all for now, I have received the Bridlington Samples from Jon which are superb and a great starting point to the implementation of the product.

What I've been up to...

Today I have gone through all the site-recordings from our Bridlington trip and saved all the samples ready for putting into MAX.  I've also created two instruments in Kontakt, one which creates a a wide range of rain sounds and one which creates different wind textures.  These can then be played, recorded and cut up to be put into MAX. I think I'm going to create some more instruments, for example one which can create a realistic insect sound, and another which will create more abstract winter sounds.

Group Discussion - Tuesday 17th March

Today Jon C, Tom and Gareth briefly discussed the construction of the audio in the installation.  Ideas discussed include;

• How the raw audio samples will be saved and organised
• The format and the bit rate of the audio files after editing
• The construction of the MAX patches within which the audio samples will be placed
• Gareth will commence with a patch that works in a similar way to the basic functions within Kontakt
• The audio patch will allow for around 3 to 4 layers of ambience however this may change
• The audio patch will also include a more descriptive audio element which will highlight the visuals and also change with the seasons

The aim is to have all the audio in the system created and implemented into MAX before the work-in-progress presentation. Hopefully we will have some sort of visual element in place as well.

Roundhay Park, Site-recording

Yesterday the group travelled to Roundhay park on the outskirts of Leeds to complete some site-recording.  Sounds recorded were;

• Peaceful ambiences with a variety of bird sounds
• Swans and geese
• Light winds
• Falling water at different rates
• Streams with woodland ambience

As well as recording these sounds video was recorded for the making of dvd.  This totaled to around 2 and a half hours.

Bridlington, Site-recording

Yesterday we went to Bridlington as a group to carry out audio site-recordings and filming.  This entailed:

• 38 minutes of audio collected. 
  
• Waves against rocks, sand, walls close up and from a distance.  
  
• Recordings of seagulls, close up and from a distance.
  
• Sounds of beach, footsteps on sand.
  
• A short description by Gareth of the activities carried out, filmed with sound recording. 
  
• Filming including skys, sea, cliffs, seagulls.
  

The activities lasted around 3 hours in length.

Group Meeting - Tuesday 10th March

Minutes and Activities...

1. Both Jon's completed the product logo and it has been uploaded.
   
2. The team brochure form was also uploaded after being completed as a team.
   
3. The technical specification sheet for the showcase and final presentation was completed and handed in and Jon's Macbook Pro was pact tested.
   
4. A contact in LeedsMet was contacted about the relevant forms needed to be completed in case we product test in schools.
   
5. Each member now needs to complete their individual plan for upload on friday.
   

Group Meeting-Monday 2nd March, 1hour

Minutes of the Meeting

1. The whole group discussed the project plan, brochure form and the new set of deadlines including three for next friday.
2. Work began on a gantt chart for the project plan, started writing down all the different tasks that would need to be included.
3. Both Jon's have agreed to create a mood board for the visuals of each season, create the logo and colour scheme for the brochure form and also a website design.
4. Gareth agreed to create a website once the design had been completed.
5. Gareth and Tom have agreed to start working on an interface for the installation considering the advice from tutors with regards to the wiimote of glove idea.
6. Tentative plan drawn up for recording the audio elements before the end of next week.
   
7. The tutors suggested that the plan for the project be completed by next monday to allow them to see it.

New Blog...

Here' the new team's new blog where we can put up ideas, generally keep in touch and write down our group meetings.  We can also keep a track of how many hours we've dedicated to the project.

I thought it'd be better to choose a simple template until we've got a logo and a colour scheme for our product.