Try it yourself:

What is going on here?
That was recorded live, including the falling snowflakes. Flash can “see” the pattern on each card–depending on the pattern, the computer plays a different note. The result is that you can use pieces of paper like instruments.

How did we make it?
We put this together using FLARToolkit and Papervision3D.

Read on for more of the technical details.

FLARToolkit is a Flash port by Saqoosha of the computer vision package known as ARToolkit . You can learn more about what ARToolkit is and how it works over at Washington University’s home page for the project.

We were playing with the native Windows version of ARToolkit in the studio back in 2001 and could hardly contain our collective glee a couple weeks ago when a Tellarter dug up Boffswana’s demo of the new system running in Flash. We’d like to thank Saqoosha, Tarotaro.org and Boffswana for sharing their wonderful AS3 classes, and the Papervision crew.

Sometimes it’s a good exercise in paying attention to try to figure out how something strange, like a computer, sees the world.

Download the source code here (GPL)

Peace,
Tellart

Things have not been quiet around the Oakland office. One reason is the recent epic recording session to get some urgently needed musical material finished. As a non-musician, I find it pretty inspiring that people are doing this here. The tracks can be heard in various Tellart projects, including some of the videos elsewhere on this site.