Visibility Through Voice is a Kinect based capture setup that draws the silhouette of a participants when they speak. I used Touchdesigner as the interface between Kinect, camera, and microphone and explored it as a tool for manipulating the relationship vocalization and visibility. I spoke from a random text generator and did walks in and out of the bounds of the Kinect to make these paintings.
Videos with camera view!
Videos without camera view
I used the CHOP reference feature in Touchdesigner to pull off this effect mainly. It allowed me to take volume and pitch data from the microphone I was using and have it real-time update the brightness of my Kinect data. Once I have the audio reactive capability set up, I create a feedback loop that retains the brightness from the prior frame.
While I was very interested in the silhouette aspect of my project, I was mainly inspired by the visuals of long exposure video and the work of David Rokeby who uses a similar technique in “Plot Against Time”
I started this project knowing I wanted to work and grow in Touchdesigner. The conceptual framework grew around tests in audio reactivity. This project was mainly the result of a handful of experiments. I tried many different types of projection, recording, and methods for producing things in Touchdesigner as well as getting lots of help from the people around me. The only thing I wish I had time to fix in this project is to make the audio reactivity not connected to brightness, but opacity so that I don’t need to interact with new pixels to create color.
