Final Project: Ghost Baby Presentation P.2 & Reflection

We presented our final project today, after adding the finishing touches to it. We decided to project the clip of the Ghost Baby onto a large projector and have Katlynn, our demonstrator for this presentation, do a short demonstration at the front of the class. We also turned the lights out to add to the creepy atmosphere.

I think we addressed the main issue in our project: to add to what we initially had and make it have more baby-like characteristics (and at the same time straying from literal baby noises). There is a short clip of the final project being shown on Stephen's blog here. (Realplayer seems to be able to handle it, and not much else).


I really enjoyed working with this team. We were well-balanced, and everyone did their work well. Using both the Arduino and accelerometer was a great learning experience that I would like to further explore in the future. Thank you, team!

Final Project: Ghost Baby Enhancements

The team has decided to go along with the plan to add visuals to our project. We have filmed a short clip of the Ghost Baby (right now an ugly plastic doll picked up at the dollar store) with the camera coming in at different angles -left, right, up, down, and middle (middle being the camera is steady). The Baby has two states, angry and happy, and spikes/dips in accelerometer output can trigger either state. The directions refer to the directions we're giving the illusion of; we plan on analyzing the numerical output of the accelerometers and assigning a video to each one. This way, we get clips that look as if the person interacting is actually interacting with the Baby instead of straight out controlling its actions.

While Stephen focused on some MAX/MSP programming, Oliver, Katlynn and I worked on the videos. We separated the long video footage into the separate directional chunks and added numerous effects. We made each one black and white, and utilized effects that made the Baby's head look bulbous, made the Baby blur and increased the contrast so the haunting, creepy feeling could be achieved.

Also, we fixed the wrist band so the Arduino and accelerometer were more secure. We put the Arduino (with the accelerometer wires happily attached to it) in a separate sturdy pouch that we affixed to the wrist band. We put the accelerometer in a small, conveniently located "hole" (rather, a small square depression in the wrist band) and secured that down too.

To see a sample of what the Ghost Baby video looks like, check it out at Katlynn's site, over here. I certainly hope it's creepy -it is a ghost, after all.

Greg's Comments

Here are the comments Greg made in an email to Oliver:

"I like the fact that you have stayed away from literal sounds and I'm intrigued that you have based your sounds on baby noises. It might be an idea to let the uses hear more of the original sound. Right now the word baby refers abstractly to a virtual collection of sounds. by giving hints of the original sounds the virtual space may take on more characteristics of "baby".

As I said in class, the main thing I would like to see you work on is stabilizing the space more. this means reducing any latency of response or drift of coordinates."

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As I stated in my previous post, having something to support the sounds would make them more definitive and set more of a space. I hadn't considered the childlike characteristics of the Ghost Baby (though I should have, considering the project title). Maybe adding a baby-themed video can help here. As for coordinates and latency of response, I'm pretty sure we can work these out after a lot of programming (with the coordinates, this is likely trickier).