AS3 Motion Detection Drawing Installation

AS3 Webcam Drawing from chris teso on Vimeo.

You have to admire a job that allows you to make a bumble-bee/owl (a bumblowl?) fly around a mural merely by waving your finger… all while drinking beer.

This is an elaboration on my actionscript webcam motion detection experiments, built as an installation for the Inverge party hosted by North. The idea was to take motion detection and combine it with art in the form of digital drawing and 2d space in the form of a wall mural. The concept is to allow human interaction to affect physical space, freeing oneself from all traditional user interface. The application works by constantly monitoring a webcam, taking snapshots of each frame every millisecond. The pixels in the current frame are compared to pixels in the previous. The difference in brightness within each section determines whether or not motion had occurred in this area of the screen. If motion is detected the coordinates of a rectangular grid around said motion is recorded and the owl is ordered to go to that point. The line drawings begin and follow the owl recording a ‘flight path’. A mask is drawn to prevent the owl and its drawing trail from going in front of some of the trees giving the mural a sense of dimension.

Thanks to the great Eric Natzke for the drawing inspiration and open source, and NORTH for being forward thinking enough to encourage digital experimentation.

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