Experiment – Anton Sahler

FaceOSC

FaceOSC – A fascinating free software that tracks your face f.e. with your webcam and generates OSC data (open sound control).

The net you see tracked over your face is divided in parts as eyebrows, eyes, mouth and jaw. Even the position of your face, turning of your head and scale of your face will create a value which you can use in many different ways.

As I’m playing arround with 3d projection mapping a lot these days I had the idea of letting my face gestures control effects in my mapping software. To underline the communication between your movements and the computer i wanted FaceOSC also to control some knobs on my synthesizers in abelton live.

For example: I open my mouth and the mapped boxes slowly turn from green to red while the bassline you hear gets more frequency.

To get things to work you need to communicate the created data from FaceOSC to the 3Dmapping and sound programs. Another software is needed: the so called Osculator. With this helpful tool you can arrange the incoming data and send it to any other application.

WORKING WITH ND FILTERS

I am a big fan of playing and experimenting with time. Arround 2 years ago i bought a HAIDA 10x ND filter, since then I’m enjoying shooting moving objects like clouds, people, cars etc next to architecture. The maximum time I have tried so far was arround 30 minutes using 2 of the x10 ND filters attached to eachother. Pixel errors occured on images taken longer than 20 minutes with my Canon 5D III. But for the most tasks shorter durations let you get the better results anyways. My favourite thing to shoot with ND filters are definitly moving skies, especially when reflected on water. There is a special sky needed to get a good contrast between cloud and sky. Shiny white single clouds that move towards the camera in front of a dark blue sky, this is a good setup to spend some longer time to capture a lot of time in a single image.

Another useful purpose for a ND filter is when you want to get rid of people crossing your picture. Taking a picture of 5 minutes e.g. will only show people who are sitting or standing around. Moving people will just disappear magically.

Another hint for the post work of moving cloud images is to turn down the luminance of the blue color (blue sky). This will higher the contrast a lot and works even better with black and white.

If you would like to try long time exposures at daytime, here is what you need besides your camera: ND filter (neutral density), a tripod, a remote control to set up the time and of course a lot of pacience.

BODY ROCK!

Inspired by 3D printing clay i wanted to know how this unique and natural material works on bare skin. As the quite thick layer of clay dried it started to crack, which created wonderful details which shows the beauty of coincidence of physics and chemistry. As the material shrinks while drying it pinches the skin which can even hurt a bit. The whole crew involved in the shooting had great fun attaching more and more of the sticky clay. We have learned a lot about the characteristics and behaviour of clay. Looking forward to the next dirty photo shoot!