Why do we work so hard?

[vimeo https://vimeo.com/92557881 w=640]

Why do we work so hard? For what? For this? For stuff? Other countries they work, stroll home, they stop by the cafe, they take August off. Off. Why aren’t you like that? Why aren’t we like that? Because we’re crazy driven hardworking believers that’s why. Those other countries think we’re nuts. Whatever. Were the Wright brothers insane? Bill Gates? Les Paul? Ali. Were we nuts when we pointed to the moon? That’s right, we went up there and you know what we got? Bored. So we left. We got a car up there and left the keys in it. Do you know why? Because we’re the only ones going back up there that’s why. But I digress. It’s pretty simple: you work hard, you create your own luck, and you gotta believe anything is possible. As for all the stuff, that’s upside of only taking two weeks off in August. N’est-ce pas?

ENJOY RESPONSIBLY

I created a tool in Processing that lets me mash up two (or more) videos together. The sketch allows the user to change the interval between the videos and their transparency values, and also keeps track of the changes so the same set of transitions can be played again later.

Here are a few samples:

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/89869267 w=640]

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/89883436 w=640]

Programmatic Control of Surveillance Cameras

I’ve become interested in the idea of generating a film programmatically using pan/tilt/zoom surveillance cameras. To that end I’ve started putting together some processing code that can read a live camera stream and is programmed with a variety of shots (as of now, a zoom, blur, and quick pan). The application can decide what shots to take, and when to make recordings – thereby automating the editing and the shooting process. The code is here on github.

I have two experiments so far. The first finds faces, zooms in, and then makes a recording between 3 and 5 seconds. You can view it here.

The second experiment pans to coordinates based on Perlin noise and then holds a shot based on a sine wave function. In this first video my subjects don’t realize they’re being filmed. In the second video you can see their reactions as I tell them what’s been happening.