Overview

The EyeCon software is a camera-based motion recognition system especially designed for stage and installation art work. It was developed by Frieder Weiss and is an on-going project of the Palindrome Inter-Media Performance Group which is co-directed by Robert Wechsler and the program author. The first version of EyeCon appeared in 1995.

Applications

EyeCon permits movement to control or generate sounds, music, text, stage lighting or projectable art. It is adaptable to an enormous number of applications, lending itself to experimentation in genuinely new directions in performing and installation art. It offers a way to create interactive video environments without the need to get into graphical or script-based programming. This means, that people without special computer skills are able to use it.

See also >artistic considerations<.

EyeCon has been used by a number of theater and dance groups as well as singers and performance artists. The Palindrome IMPG piece 'Seine hohle Form' uses EyeCon to control an interactive MAX/MSP patch written by Butch Rovan The piece was awarded First Prize at the Berlin Transmediale in 2002 (category: "interactive art"). EyeCon was also the basis for various installation works developed during the EU workshop project 'Realtime Presence' which were presented at Ars Electronica 2002 and the Cynetart festival in Dresden.

How motion is sensed

A video signal is fed into the computer and the video image appears on the computer screen. Using the mouse, graphical elements like lines or fields are superimposed onto the video image in different colors . When a performer touches one of these imaginary lines, or moves within one of the fields, something happens, for example, a certain sound might be heard. This is the basic principle of Touchlines and Dynamic Fields. Position Trackers work somewhat differently since they are not in fixed positions, but rather move with the performers, following them as they go.

Credits

EyeCon has been used in various applications by media artists around the world*. These users and others have provided us with invaluable comments and suggestions:

Humatic (Christian Graupner, Niels Peters),
Theater der Klänge
Georg Hobmeier
Tenteki
Pablo Ventura
BlueLab Dresden
Orm Finnendahl
Dominik Rinnhofer
Butch Rovan
Bertrand Melier and Jean-Marc Duchenne
Margarita Bali

The authors would especially like to thank Bertrand Merlier for his assistance with this manual. (Bertrand Merlier and Jean-Marc Duchenne created the piece "4Hands", which is also EyeCon-driven).

* Please let us know if you are creating art using EyeCon and tell us your experiences. We will be happy to include your link.

Comments, Suggestions, Bugs

Palindrome IMPG

Johannisstr. 42

90419 Nürnberg

+49 911 397472

Germany

www.palindrome.de

eyecon@palindrome.de