documentation of the event

The night of the performance/installation, Gary Kupczak shot the source material for this document of the event.

Site Unseen Performance, Nov. 9

We are grateful for the engaged and appreciative audience and for their thoughtful comments on the night of the "performance". Hoping we can find another venue where the piece can continue to be available. Thanks to all of our friends for coming, and to those who helped.

If you missed the event and would like to know how it sounded, here is a sample interaction.

Dress Rehearsal

Nov. 8, 2009
What this (dress rehearsal) means for us is the actual installation. Looking forward to seeing how the piece works in situ, with all the components working together including image analysis for floor location and accelerometer data live. Just in case this doesn't work for some reason (like Accel. sensitivity, for eg.), we have 4 versions of the piece with varying capabilities that we can swap in, including a pre-recorded, non-interactive recording of 9:30 min. that can just be looped. Although if the computer itself fails, we will need something to play that on.

Rehearsals

Rehearsal on Thus., Oct. 15 - got all equipment mounted inside the elevator panel. Mon., Oct. 26, 2nd rehearsal, did another recording with the PS3 camera mounted on our ceiling bracket for position and analysis of those fine points like when does the arrow change from up to down, what happens when no button is pushed, how long between floor 1 and 4 when neither 2 nor 3 is pushed?

the home stretch

We have been working on the physical installation in the elevator during rehearsal (and other) times, including finding or adapting a camera which filters out infra-red light, as the floor number display is hard to read - all elements show up too well - with the IR sensitivity. Everyone at the Cultural Center has been most helpful. In addition, we've created a logical flowchart that shows the passage of audio file information from source to display, and have decided that since the doors are open more than they are closed when the elevator is in actual use, we will play the categories when stopped at a floor, the drones (chants, medical sounds) while the elevator is moving. Voila a sample of what that might sound like:
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and here is the flowchart logic:

Audio content

We now have six populated content areas (Fiction, History, Law&Order, Medical, Performing Arts, and Self Help) for each paradigm (Disability Consciousness, Medical/Media). Background sound will be provided in each case by repetitive phrases or sounds – in the case of Disability Consciousness, the voices of demonstrators chanting, in Medical/Media, the sound of medical/hospital equipment. The basic premise for the work is encapsulated in a phrase rendered from text by AT&T’s text to speech on line tool:

Which makes it clear that for some, disability is the problem, while for others, the problem is the way disability is viewed and responded to.

There are lots of terrific resources on line. One great series of articles including history and some basics,

Another about the MDA telethon,

A good article articulating points of view on the Clint Eastwood film “Million Dollar Baby” (which we quote from),

And the organization that has helped organize persons with disability and helped articulate their point of view, ADAPT.

Optical Sensing of Elevator State

The two optical methods I had in mind for sensing the elevator's state were video analysis of the elevator display (using a web cam pointed at the display) or mounting eight photoresistors in a frame to surround the display. Since video analysis involves less work I decided to try that first. I made a test patch in PD with simulated elevator display images (see below). My first test was to see if "blob tracking" would be able to distinguish the various elevators states. Clearly, blob size alone will not do. The display images with the same number of segments (2 and 3, either up or down) have the exact same blob size. Vertical blob position values for those same images are indentical too. Fortunately there is sufficient difference in horizontal blob positions to distinguish the six floor states. Now we need to record video of the actual display in the elevator to confirm my simulation and note the dynamics. - Drew