(Clock?) Interfaces 03

This week I had initially worked on some interfaces using more third party APIs however I ran into a problem with (unknowingly) exceeding the free tier for those data sets. After having grieved sufficiently, I began experimenting instead with other forms of input - sound and video - and investigating this loose theme of time-based interfaces.

Speech time

Using the p5.speech library extension I created this interface that allows speech-to-text input from the user’s microphone. The algorithm is set to listen continuously as well as to generate text before it’s finished processing what it believes is the correct interpretation. The result is the generation of words that not only reflect recorded speech as a marker of passing time, but also a window into algorithmic understanding of speech.

Long exposure

Long exposure mimics the effects of long-exposure photography through constantly redrawing the canvas with the user’s webcam feed at very low opacity. The result is another visual metaphor for the recorded passing of time. Because the feed is always redrawing the canvas, this long exposure can continue indefinitely, with initial video traces eventually fading away to be replaced by new ones.

Snail cam

The snail cam is an iteration of long exposure, moving the camera capture around the canvas based on a combination of perlin noise and the current seconds. A second circular element moves around the canvas according to perlin noise and the minute count, and its radius is determined by the hour. This was an experiment in extending the painting with time idea to the particular context of the viewer.