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WoW Moviewatch: Controlled
In Controlled, the mercurial master of mayhem known as Wowcrendor addresses how our characters feel about being controlled by players. I found myself yearning for a Tron reference ("He fights for the user!") but the overall effect was pretty awesome. The "how our characters feel about it" angle is certainly hilarious, but the line "Free Tauren" struck an interesting chord. You can imagine a huge group of wandering Tauren proclaiming their independence from the Controlls. It's like a cross between Tron and Dune. Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.
Swarm Light is an $180k LED chandelier controlled by an iPhone
This thing you see in the video on the next page (and in the picture above) is called the "Swarm Light." It's a series of little LEDs hung in sequence along three clusters of grids, lit up in order by a computer to display simulated collective movement, like a swarm of bees. It's very interesting, both as a display for a programmed algorithm, and just as an art project. All together, the display costs $180,000 -- no small chunk of change. If you do watch the video, you can see that the whole thing is run by an iPhone. rAndom International created their own internal app for Apple's device to run their various installations, and the iPhone app can dim the lights, adjust them to ambient light conditions and switch through the various modes. Just another awesome use of the iPhone.
iPhone-controlled 3D display, via ping pong balls and air pumps
I'm not quite 100% sure what this is -- it's supposed to be a "floating forecaster," some sort of 3D display for weather information, but to me it looks more like 30 air guns with ping pong balls sitting in them. I don't really see how the "weather" part of the display works, but what's really cool is that the whole thing is controlled by an iPhone. It looks like you touch whichever part of the grid you want to raise or lower, and then move your thumb up or down to set the ball at a certain level. With a little more software work, there's probably a lot more that could be done here, just creating patterns by swiping across the screen, or even running a game like Pong as the balls raise and lower across the grid in sequence. But as an art installation, it's pretty neat as is. Check out the full video after the break. Thanks, William!
Toy car controlled by breathing
While controlling a full-sized automobile with a PSP may be impressive, at least this project has some amount of practicality. Musicians and singers, listen up, because this breathing-controlled car could provide the perfect mix of practice and pleasure to get your controlled breathing, well, under control. Even if you couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, Matthew Brown's creation gives you a chance to have some fun while blowing off some steam. The aptly named "Breath Control Car" was designed to make the mastery of controlled breathing a bit more enjoyable, and he pulls it off by using a MIDI breath controller to channel puffs to a MAX/MSP. MIDI signals are converted to serial data, where those signals are beamed via Bluetooth to a PIC chip, and finally to a servo that directs the car. If all that sounds like hot air, here's the deal: the harder you exhale, the harder it steers right, while softer breaths steer it left. The forward and reverse functions are handled by a simple remote-control, presumably to avoid hyperventilation. If you've been tooting your horn about getting serious with your breathing, but need a more riveting reason to practice, watch this machine in action to see what Matthew's breath car can do for you. [Via Makezine]
Cricket-controlled Pac-Man
It looks like hamsters aren't the only critters that have found themselves as unwitting accomplices is some mad game designer's grand scheme to find a less artificial intelligence. Recently, grad student Wim van Eck turned to crickets to add a bit more unpredictability to a game of Pac-Man, casting them in the role of the lowly ghosts against a human-controlled Pac. There's few details about how the system actually works, but it seems that the crickets actually proved to be more worthy adversaries than your typical AI-controlled enemy: at one point, a particularly clever "ghost" decided to shed its skin, probably knowing full well that it would become invisible to the game's color-based detection system. Not bad, now how about a centipede-controlled version of Centipede, Wim? [Via Pasta & Vinegar]
