Week4- The Eye

“Unlike the human eye and brain, no computer vision algorithm is completely "general", which is to say, able to perform its intended function given any possible video input”

 This week's lecture built was very technical and built upon the conceptual ideas in the readings.
The different positionings that were possible with the projectors were interesting because I had never thought about all the work that went into the actually physical set up of the examples we had seen.


What I found useful was that the readings actually related to the lecture material which helped me solidify my understanding of the concepts.


The author went through the different limitations of a computer system’s ‘vision’ and discussed how it’s still a major problem even today. It gave a good base of chronological advancement to show that it’s a hot topic even till this day.

Particularily interesting, was the explanation of how motion tracking actually worked.

The use of specific points on the screen usually given by pixels, are used to track the motion of the body that you choose to follow.


It was interesting to read about the different ways in which the human body can be tracked.“The mouth cavity is easily segmentable as a dark region, and the circularity of its shape is also closely linked to vowel sound. The pupils of the eye emit an easy-to-track infrared retroreflection, and they also indicate a person's direction of gaze.”

   

This also gave me ideas for the project, and how I might be able to track motion.

Week 3- I think therefore I am

"The very act of doubting one's own existence serves as proof of the reality of one's own existence."

The lecture was very deep and talked about how do we even know we exist.
The idea that our existence is proved only by experiencing was something i had never thought about before.

The second main idea brought up was Phenomenology.

The body is our primary instrument for understanding. *An important note was that the unreflected experience comes first and then the reflection occurs within our mind. This reflection can actually change the experience.

The question of the internet came up as well. Will we become less human or super human due to our increased exposure to the cyber world?

Week2- The beginning

Week 1 was my first taste of what body interface really was.

It was the first time I had seen examples motion used to graph out a result. It was very cause-and-effects type of stuff. The examples shown in lecture really caught my eye, especially Funky Forest. I found it particularly amazing how the children could direct water flow through the environment with their bodies.

 "Funky forest is an interactive ecosystem where children create trees with their body and then divert the water flowing from the waterfall to the trees to keep them alive. The health of the trees contributes to the overall health of the forest and the types of creatures that inhabit it."

 Overall the first week was for me a taste of what was to come, and showed me what was possible to be done.


A catalyst for what's to come.