Retrieving Humanity will address the difference between viewing culture from the outside or engaging with it as a participant. The audience will be encouraged to explore these differing attitudes and test the traditional boundary between audience and performer by becoming a participant. Santa Fe Complex will be transformed into an immersive space with a promenade of six kiosks, each with unique video and audio from around the world. At the end of the promenade will be a large screen displaying a mix of this visual information.

As participants approach each kiosk they witness various live scenes from around the world. They see and hear a festival in Bologna, a street in Baghdad, a dance club in Berlin, a sleeping apartment dweller in Toyko…, each offering a portrayal of different experiences occurring at the same moment. At one kiosk the participants’ image is added to the video to include them in the scene, at another kiosk the participant picks up a tea pot and changes the the view from black and white to color, and at another kiosk the closer you get to the screen the more the video comes into focus. The streaming video, along with the influences the audience have created are mixed by a DJ and VJ and projected onto the large screen and the audio mix is played through large speakers. This collaboratively created video allows the participant to realize that they are involved in a much more complex system outside of themselves.

Retrieving Humanity creates a collaborative workspace that encourages the exploration of innovative technologies which enable social understanding and cooperation. It explores virtual and physical spaces that use advanced computational tools, artistic creation, education, problem solving, and group development. In addition, learning opportunities will be available for the public through workshops, lectures and the performance itself. Students from SFCC, IAIA, and NMHU will not only benefit from these same learning experiences, but will also be able to work hands on with the creators of Retrieving Humanity.

Our expectation for Retrieving Humanity is that it will open doors of communication and provide a contemporary view on how cultures interconnect. Through these connections a new, communal story is created from the personal expressions of individuals around the world and in Santa Fe. Communities, near and far, will learn there are new modes of interaction and experience which can reduce the real distances between them. Through reaching out and engaging, instead of remaining a silent observer, participants will realize that there are new possibilities for connecting with the world around them. The success of the piece will be demonstrated by the interactions of the community, participants and students both during and after the exhibition. Through direct communication and experience we will know if the public has discovered new opportunities to make connections and if students have been inspired to use technology to have a stronger relationship with the world.

Ipoh, Malaysia – Kamal Sabran

Brisbane, Australia – Rozina Suliman with LALITCS

Seoul, South Korea – Bo Kyung Suh

Santiago, Chile – Nicole Rademacher

Lagos, Nigeria – Emeka Ogboh

Bern, Switzerland – Michael Spahr

Santa Fe Complex will be transformed into an immersive space with a promenade of six kiosks. Each kiosk will showcase a unique global location and a unique interactive visual performance component. At the end of the promenade will be a large video screen displaying a mix of this visual information, offering a portrayal of the myriad of connections occurring at the same moment.

Retrieving Humanity will allow the audience to actively participate in creating a unique work of art by communicating and performing with the local and worldwide community. Through the use of cutting-edge technology, including custom-made software, motion sensors, media streaming, computer networking, and live audio and video mixing each participant becomes a collaborator.

This event will take place on Friday July 30, 2010 from 7pm to 9pm at the Santa Fe Complex. Santa Fe Complex is located next to the Railyard Art District at 632 Agua Fria in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Parking is available via Romero Street. Visit the sf_x web site for more information.

Retrieving Humanity is created by Parallel Flux. Parallel Flux utilizes cutting edge technology to create various forms of media art; pushing the boundaries of art, technology, and communication. Parallel Flux artists are Ethan Bach, Jason Goodyear, Jena Greer, Armohn Jackson, Peter Joseph, Charles Veasey, and Aryn Zev.

DOWNLOAD THE RETRIEVING HUMANITY PRESS PACK HERE

Cinemacope is a radio show for and about filmmakers in New Mexico. Hosted by Monique Anair and Matt Page, the show talks with independent filmmakers working and showing in New Mexico (as well as others involved in the film industry) and showcases classes and seminars in media and film.

Santa Fe Complex has proven itself to be a multifaceted local venue for science, technology, and art and we feel it’s time to shake it up and celebrate this amazing space with some luscious beats. Festivities begin at 7:30pm with hands-on demonstrations of the technology involved in Retrieving Humanity and performances by various artists including Wise Fool New Mexico, The Berimbau Capoeira Group, WOW (With Our Words) spoken word group, and more. Later on the music starts with prettylittlepaw doing acousmatronica, J-Kind, back on the scene for one night only, mixing 90′s funk dub, and headliner DJ Dirt Girl laying down electro with eclectic mixes of Bollywood, J-pop and Funk Neurotico. The Complex will be alive with vivacious beats and wall-to-wall live video mixing. Not to mention the video dome. Admission for Off the Rails is $5 – $10 sliding scale. Food and drinks will be available for purchase.

The fundraiser goes to support Retrieving Humanity, a one of a kind interactive performance and installation that will bring live streaming video and audio from around the world to Santa Fe. This new concept of storytelling will allow the audience, by participation, to explore and express connections with their community and the world at large. This event will be held at Santa Fe Complex, 632 Agua Fria, Santa Fe, NM on July 30, 2010 at 7pm.

Off The Rails performers Ethan Bach, J-Kind, prettylittlepaw, and up in the sky, DJ Dirt Girl.

With Retrieving Humanity, our “sure thing” was the step in the process where we stream the desktops of the six kiosk computers to Ethan’s laptop so he can do a live VJ mix of them as part of the show. Sounds easy, right? If you want to see just how easy it was, read through Ethan’s notes of the step-by-step process he had to go through and all of the technology and methods he tested out before finding a solution. Not for the faint of heart, or those who get sleepy when reading non-fiction.

——————————

Thank God we got it working!!

Bug log from when I attempted to open in VLC.
main error: open of `http://10.1.10/….’ failed: (null)
main debug: thread ended
main debug: dead input
main debug: changing item without a request (current 2/3)
main debug: nothing to play
macosx debug: input has stopped, refreshing interface
main debug: TIMER input launching for ‘http://10.1.10/….’ : 10055.393 ms – Total 10055.393 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 10055.392 ms)

TESTING

Tested wizard from file on harddrive and all…. Not working.

Tried advanced open > capture > eyesight
Settings stream http url: 10.1.10….
Encapsulating: raw
Video encoder: h264
NOT WORKING
Attempted with Juli’s computer, not working.

VLC running the isight and supposedly running the stream is heavy on the processor. Keeps slowing. Not much else open.

Attempted a UDP stream to no avail.

RAW saved as a raw file, only open with photoshop and looks like static although it was suppose to be capturing my desktop.

Able to save to file.
Transcode to file > existing play item > qtcapture(isight)
Transcode video: mpg- 2 video
Bitrate 1024
Encapsulate method: mpeg ps

Attempted same input settings to a http stream with no luck.

Tried sending to http with a partial extract enabled ( 1 to 5000) error error error

Attempt to capture the screen and it worked. Capture will only work, however when you name the file. Must go to choose each time on the export to get to naming.

What about using Apple Remote Desktop??? Cant has to be in a browser….

Try to assign a static IP then stream.
Safari can’t open the page “http://192.168…./” because Safari can’t connect to the server “192.168….”
Even states this when trying on my own computer, so there is just some sort of disconnect.

Change proxy server settings in systems settings > server
Nothing, reset

Getting a file downloading. With :8080, error message (above) with :1234

Turned blue tooth sharing on.

Still getting the cant connect to server error.

VLC Forums

http://forum.videolan.org/viewforum.php?f=4

tried ogg and did not work.

“Looking at the VLC docs, mux=mp4 and access=http is not a valid combination”
-this is not my problem. I think its with the “server”. I need to open port 80.

I took off as much of firewall from the router as I could find. Then I get this “The requested URL /1234 was not found on this server.” (or 8080)
Disabled all the firewall stuff I changed and am getting same error as this one.

ONLY THING LET TO TRY IS LINE OF CODE TO OPEN PORT *)

TRY QT BROADCAST…
I get the same error when doing a manual QT broadcast through my IP.
Safari can’t open the page “http://192.168…./” because Safari can’t connect to the server “192.168….”.
Can’t do desktop (screen) streaming from broadcaster (not that I have found)
“Don’t use IPChicken or Whatismyip or a STUN server to get your IP address for this. This method depends on your Local Network IP address, which is somewhat different from the public IP address used for the Internet.”

“If you are streaming over the internet you should use IPChicken or Whatismyip or a STUN server to get your IP address for this. This method does not depend on your Local(private) Network IP address, which is somewhat different from the public IP address used for the Internet.”

If I checkout www.whatsmyip.org then I get another IP address, not the one I find in System preferences. Says my IP address is: 67.164….
You can also do port testing on this site.
Port 80 timed out.

Port http 80 open, but still not able to put up a live stream.
ftp 21 open, not opening.

TRYING DARWIN STREAMING SERVER http://dss.macosforge.org/
While sharing the same code base as QuickTime Streaming Server, Darwin Streaming Server is an open source project intended for developers who need to stream QuickTime and MPEG-4 media on alternative platforms such as Windows, Linux, and Solaris, or those developers who need to extend and/or modify the existing streaming server code to fit their needs.

http://127.0.0/….

SSL is not available on this computer. Please make sure that the Net::SSLeay perl module, OpenSSL, and a signed SSL certificate are installed.

http://www.openssl.org/

this requires several things in order to install…
This feature requires that you have a valid streaming server SSL certificate installed.
OpenSSL requires
Required software:

- StuffIt Expander 5.5 or later, alternatively MacGzip and SUNtar;
- Scriptable Finder;
- CodeWarrior Pro 5;

Pain in the ass to install.
Forget that for now

Go to http://127.0.0/… in browser. Enable video broadcasting and click start broadcast. When I go to view broadcast Safaria crashes.
“404 not found.”
Not sure how to use this. How does it know what to broadcast?
Able to get audio from what I am doing now. There is a slight delay (10 seconds or so).

Open QT broadcaster. Needs to be on transmission: automatic
Precondition failed 412

Well, this is only going to work with QT Braodcaster anyways, and it does not allow for screen streaming. Forget it.

About to forget this and move onto the broadcast MX/MSP

To get in just type IP address of server in browser window.
Netgear access

Set up correctly with the correct IP and all. Should be able to open my own stream, but getting a general error in Realplayer
Try to open in QT and it states the live broadcast is paused.

Opened port 8554 still paused

Perhaps there is an interferance from an application. Jason and I both have Flock, so I delete flock.
We are having the same problems and we were able to use broadcast before….
No difference

media hive is a cross-platform (works in OS X, Windows and Linux) streaming media management project. With it, you can access your media collection from any web browser, and play your media from anywhere you have Internet access. This tutorial will guide you in setting up and using media hive.
I install mediahive, but not sure it is what I am looking for, but it will be a good test.

Max/MSO jit.qt.broadband works in QT on my computer.
It saves a file, the I open that file. The streaming quality is crap.

Able to drop the untitled.sdp file into Juli’s dropbox and play in QT.
VLC does not play this file.
Relplayer will not open file.
No iTunes
Only QT

VidVox almost pays it. It’s a little crazy looking. AND IS NOT WORKING AGAIN. All I see if the Q.

And it is still!! Then goes back to the Q.
This does not work.

Upload to Justin.tv via Justin.tv worked just fine. Tested stream –looked fine.

??? TRYING TO VLC (udp) to http

<html>
<head><title>Demo of VLC mozilla plugin</title></head>
<body>

Demo of VLC mozilla plugin – Example 2

<embed type=”application/x-vlc-plugin”

name=”video2″
autoplay=”no” loop=”no” hidden=”yes”
target=”rtp://@239.255.12.42″ />

Play video2
Stop video2
Fullscreen

</body>
</html>

http://www.videolan.org/doc/play-howto/en/ch04.html

2. http://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation:WebPlugin#Video_object

TESTING CAMTWIST
Back to QT broadcast because although CamTwist may work to connect to my desktop, it uses another software to stream.

All my ports are timing out on the security testing. 80, 43, and ? should be open according to my settings on the router.

Used these directions:

QT Broadcast in Network choose stream manual unicast
Put the IP address that your going to stream to.

Automated Unicast works with a few seconds delayed action. Image is very pixilated and does not like movement.
(that maybe part of the effect? Use it as an effect anyway.)
My processing is maxed out, that maybe the reason its not working.

Justin.tv broadcast works to broadcast my webcam to the internet.
Don’t forget to make sure the ports are open http://www.whatsmyip.org/ports/apps/
(tonight getting timed out, but doesn’t seem to matter)
open ports on router by using server IP in browser.
Open these:

Is there a way to do a local network QT broadcast that steams in a browser window?

Must have video settings cranked up to get a decent image.
600 x 480
h.264
color
best quality
fps 50
keyframe 60
limit datarae 4000
-that looks really good.

Review of what works.
To Stream
1 – Open Cam Twist
2 – Open Preferences > General and change to 30fps
3 – Put it on desktop setting and click select.
4 – Open QT Broadcaster (see video above for directions)
Make video setting source CamTwist
And info as above.
The click broadcast.

To Watch
1 – open stream in QT
2 – save stream as reference movie (under save as)
3 – put the saved movie in the same directory as an html file with this code (in this case the movie is titled ‘mystream.mov’ :

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd”>
<html xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”>
<head>
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=UTF-8″ />
<title>Untitled Document</title>
</head>

<body>
<div align=”center”>
<!– begin embedded QuickTime file… –>
<OBJECT classid=’clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B’ width=”800″
height=”600″ codebase=’http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab’>
<param name=’src’ value=”mystream.mov”>
<param name=’autoplay’ value=”true”>
<param name=’controller’ value=”false”>
<param name=’loop’ value=”true”>
<EMBED src=”mystream.mov” width=”800″ height=”600″ autoplay=”true”
controller=”false” loop=”true” pluginspage=’http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/’>
</EMBED>
</OBJECT>
</div>
</body>
</html>

——————————

Hallelujah

We’ve also set the date for a pre-test pre-test. On April 3, we’ll set up the computers donated to us by IAIA and test out the networking, streaming and basic setup.

Some of the ideas being discussed for kiosk interactivity are: focal change based on proximity, audio manipulation based on motion, and using some sort of Wii-style controller, probably embedded in an everyday device people are used to. We’ve also discussed the possibility of having multiple streams available at a kiosk with some non-traditional interface that would allow audience participants to switch between them.

Charles has written a piece of software to handle the internal network video transfer. We’ll be testing it before the next meeting. Armohn has identified 6 grants he will be preparing applications for. Jena has re-contacted all of the people who have expressed interest in participating to introduce herself and touch base on what the commitment will entail. We are also in the process of collecting specific computer / access / bandwidth information from everyone.

Plans are set for the April 3 test. Jason and Ethan will be at Santa Fe Complex from 10am – 6pm. They’ll be making cables, taking inventory and testing the network connections. Also, hopefully testing connections with individual participants. We have announced the date to our students and are offering extra credit for anyone who wishes to come by and help out. Many students have expressed an interest in the technical side of things, and this is definitely going to be that kind of day.

Jason and Ethan are off to the Black Hole, supposedly to find gear for the show, but really just because they’re a couple of geeks and the Black Hole is geek heaven on earth.

Photo by: backseatpilot.

We’ve had some more discussion about the construction of the kiosks. The current version is made out of sheet rock and with it’s paper covering it reflects sound to a certain extent. Covering one or both sides with fabric or foam would reduce some of the reflections in the space (which has a concrete floor and a high ceiling). But some of the questions this raises are: Is a dead space is better than a live space? Will covering the kiosks with more absorbent material cause us to lose some of the high frequency sounds? And what about the look of the kiosk?

Jason has a vision of the kiosks as being transparent, like a thin acrylic so all of the technology running the show is on display. Yeah right. Big money. On a more realistic note, Peter has arranged for Santa Fe AV to donate the use of 6 large-screen monitors and 2 subwoofers.