Peter's Projects

In February 2008, I worked on an installation for Michel Gondry at Deitch Projects. Visitors would conceive a film, write a script, and shoot their film all within a 2-hour window.

I created software and electronics for several parts of the installation. A train interior and bedroom interior both had video windows that could be switched between day/night and country/city. A car had a projected background, also switchable between day/night and country/city, with the playback speed and volume controlled by a gas pedal (a hacked guitar pedal).

Two units had video backgrounds that moved in syncrhonization with hand-cranked miniature foregrounds. I created wooden optical encoder wheels to measure the rotation. The structural and mechanical parts (along with all of the other sets) were created by Tim Rossiter.

After being installed in New York, the installation traveled to Sao Paolo and Rio.

Links

Photos at Deitch Projects
Photos on Flickr
An Interview
An Article (New York)
An Article (Brazil)

Photos

In August 2007, I worked on a Daft Punk music video directed by Olivier Gondry.

The video was shot using hundreds of cameras, mostly wielded by audience members (mostly using cameras brought be the audience members). Tapes were distributed at the start of the show, people were assigned locations to stand, and tapes were collected at the end of the show.

Within hours of the show ending, we began around-the-clock tape transfers, using 7 computers and 8 cameras (see photos below). The transferring finished ahead of schedule, in about 24 hours, producing a couple terabytes of data.

Then we began processing the data. Olivier worked on one copy of the data while I worked on another copy. We each wrote custom software to align and edit the footage.

Links

MySpace version (higher quality)
YouTube version (lower quality)

Photos

In the summer of 2008, I designed and built the electronics and software for an Os Gemeos installation at Deitch Projects. The installation consisted of a 1960’s electric analog organ, modified so that each key played a digital sample, enclosed in a plywood box, attached to a set of speakers.

I used a Mini-ITX computer with custom software (using the portaudio library) to play the audio samples. Key presses were detected by a pair of Arduinos. One Arduino was used simply to multiplex the other Arduino’s I/O lines.

The software included a recording mode, so that Os Gemeos could record each sample using the organ keyboard and a microphone. For some samples, they played songs from a laptop attached to external speakers, which were then recorded using the organ’s software/microphone (a nice digital to analog to digital process).

The work was subsequently installed as part of The Margulies Collection in Miami.

Links

Exhibit photos at Deitch Projects
YouTube: Organ at The Margulies Collection in Miami
YouTube: Os Gemeos at Deitch Projects

Photos