WHAT IS RULR
A flexible toolkit for calibrating spatial technologies such as cameras, projectors and Kinect’s.
Calibrations can then be exported to real-time graphics environments such as openFrameworks, VVVV and Processing in order to create interactive visual experiences. Spatial media artworks which employ optical devices such as cameras, projectors, Kinects and motion tracking systems often require spatial alignment between those devices and the physical world. This spatial alignment allows the devices to act more deliberately against the physical world, for example a projector might (when calibrated) be able to highlight specific features of a moving physical object, or a camera might be able to provide the 3D location of a visitor’s face.
Often this spatial alignment has been cumbersome and distracting, causing artists and developers to spend too much of their time solving calibration maths problems, or intensively measuring things by hand or ‘fudging’ calibrations in confusing ways. These issues create a barrier which limits the imagination of media artists working with space. Rulr attempts to offer an environment to solve these calibration problems in accurate and transparent ways. Therein Rulr aims to encourage a more ambitious approach to spatial media arts.