The installation is composed essentially of two softwares interacting between: gpredict and puredata. Gpredict track the satellites and send data as elevation, azimuth and position to a puredata patch through Open Sound Control protocol.

You can download all the code from github’s page:

https://github.com/husk00/sonandoSatelites-fictional-serie

Gpredict

This software is real-time satellite tracking and orbit  developped by Alexander Csete and released under the G.P.L. 2.0 license. It is an amazing program that let you track satellite based on public TLE data.. The fake satellites used, as well the real ones, are inserted in the system by using the config directory called Gpredict in the git repository. Actually the directory Gpredict/satdata contains a lot of unutilized satellites information that I leave there for laziness.

A preset with Quito as ground station information plus a selection of used satellites is bundled with the package.

In order to make it communicates with puredata  I had to hack the original code of the program.

[NOTE]

That, let me say, it was a wonderful demonstration, as artist that work with software, of the beauty and power of free software. Only free software let you adapt a previous software to some real artistic and technical condition the artist is facing, letting you to adapt it to fit your needs (and not the opposite, as usual happen).

[/NOTE]

The hack basically consist in modifying the file gtk-polar-view.c in the Gpredict-osc/src directory adding the code for sendings a boolean variables according to the position of the satellite related to the ground station. So when the satellite pass over the ground station a true var is sent and a audio file is played.

This hack follow the original hack of 2011 from David Pello and Bruno Vianna, whom added for first time OSC capabilities to Gpredict.

Puredata

The audio engine is composed by a collection of puredata patch receiving OpenSoundControl messages. Puredata is a dataflow programming language originally designed for DSP programming. It is released under the BSD license Term from Miller Puckete and have a great and strong community behind that make this software so punk and so beautiful. For this installation puredata vanilla was used in combination of some external, as listed in the README file. All this externals are packaged in the multimedia debian repository

Audio engine is divided in different directories one for each satellites. Some patch play just a recorded file in WAV format. Others use generative real time sounds: the puredata patch tool used to create this patches was the #webpd framework developed by Sebastien Piquemal. Especially I used the random generator demostration as in http://sebpiq.github.io/pd-fileutils/demos/randomDrone.html.

(Many many Thanks for this wonderful framework!)

Audio

The scripts present in the directory are supposed to make it easy run the installation and to automatize some task (like check if it is working or not and reboot the installation) All the audio files used by the installation are downloadables from http://estereotips.net/release/sounds/ and must be copied inside audioEngine/sounds/ directory.

They are released under the Creative Commons Zero license.

gameplay

Audiogames goal is to play digital games without using the sense of sight. The goal of the game is to catch all the virtual sound objects until the last level. Each object generates a different musical note in a binaural sound engine and when player collides with one of them this bounce around the game space generating a real time sound composition. Once player got the bonus, the higher note in game, sound objects will disappear if touched. By the contrary, the lowest note in game will ends the game.
If players walks out from game area all the sound will stops and a sound of electric show will alert him/she.
Introductory videos can be watch at the page:
audiogames.arsgames.net

artistic concept

Our first goal has been generate an interactive space where user can experiment and play basing on sense of hearing. Audiogames is an artistic video game that leaves aside images to underline the sound dimension: it represents to us a critical approach to our image centered contemporary society. This approach to video game will let to play blind people as ordinary user making no difference between different skilled players. With audiogames we are exploring the idea of inclusive gameplay in which normal and disabled people can both play computer game together due the specificness of the game itself or of the interface.
We created a new type of technological interface: an intangible and invisible one totally different to what we are use to.
We believe is very important experiment with different kinds of technological interfaces and gameplays more over classical ones, sight oriented, with the goal to include blind people as players and to let classical players live new game’s experience and cultivate own sound perception.

technical description

The game area is about 6x4m.
The user, who can be blind, moves around a virtual and real space, while the audience can watch the interaction with sound objects in a screen located outside the game area..
User’s position in the space is detected by custom made tracking software creating an interaction between virtual and real world. All the sound information is sent back to the player through wireless headphones.
We also wrote a custom software based on binaural sound synthesis principles generating a real time sound world where user can freely moves and interacts.
All the software used or written for this work is open source and available to download at:
http://code.autistici.org/svn/planetQ/audiogames/

Co-producers

Qweb is a library of python object for puredata environment. It’s a collection of object for perform online search on different web service and use the result inside puredata (youtube, flickr, wikipedia, jabber, IMAP, twitter, RSS). 

All abstractions are multiplatform so you could use it in windows too

Qweb was originally developped as part of pantaliQa project. more info: www.pantaliqa.info

Qweb is based on great pattern web python lib from CLIPS and came with all methods and tools needed for such task. More info about the library at: http://www.clips.ua.ac.be/pages/pattern

This library is out thanks the big effort of Luca Franceschini that helped a lot.

All the objects are written in python and is easy to understand thanks to the great job done at CLIP.

You can download the library from here

Together with code came also a couple of examples. Below a video demostration.

TweetsVisualization 

WikipediaSonifier:::::

RobOSC is a OSC router suposes to work with all kind of application that support OSC protocol. Through a xml description file robOSC imports OSC paths for incoming and outcoming signals. Once XMLs are imported you can connect all the listed proprierties in a patchbay gui. You can import inside robOSC as much application as you want. The goal of this application is to easy connect all OSC application that don’t let user to manage OSC path freely. Using robOSC as a bridge between application it will be far easy and fast. This code is to be meant a proof-of-concept.

A video demonstration of the program

Instructions and downloads

Mediagrid object is a Pure Data abstraction let you pick a file from your disk in a graphical way. You can preload onto the mediagrid a video, image or audio file.

Mediagrid abstraction is inspired from Videogrid external from PDVJtools package by Sergi Lario and Lluis Gomez i Bigorda. The big difference is that Mediagrid can manage also audio files and it works on all platforms.

Mediagrid was developed as part of gemQ project.

For more infos and downloads goto planetQ

PlanetQ is our working svn repository and wiki trac systems. Is kindly offered by A/I collective, a hacker political collective offering web service through independent servers. 

 Here a list of the already made abstractions:

• mediagrid: a graphical file chooser, work with file of any type

• preQiew: a monitor preview for gem patch

• stringText: an abstraction to handle long text directly in a Gem window

• OSCizer: a library for enable automagically OSC send/receive for pd GUI objects

• QolorTrack: a color tracking application OSC enabled (look the repo)

• qCut: area tracking tool OSC enabled (look the repo)

• robOSC: a general OSC router stand alone application with a pachbay GUI system to easy connect different OSC application

• explorerQ: a cross-platform file browser for puredata (look the repo)

• gemQ: a complete solution for VJ

• XmiX: a complete 8 channel digital instrument for live music

• reactOSC: a reactivision system OSC enabled

• Qweb: a puredata library that perform web research to find texts, images and videos from internet to use it in live VJ performance.

   

Go to planetQ Wiki

Download planetQ svn

A demostration:

A presentation at Cannibal Caniche Festival in Berlin

gemQ free VJ software for linux workshop from Spuk Kommune on Vimeo.

For more infos and download go to planetQ

Read the review by Create Digital Motion and by Australian vj VdmoSkati