blitzTag is a software application written as part of my involvement with
Graffiti Research Lab Germany.
Achim Kern
was the lead programmer on the project, and I undertook an assistant role in the development.
The project aims to be a successor to the original
L.A.S.E.R. Tag
project written by the members of the original GRL Chapter in NYC.
The program allows users to track a laser pointer - or any other sufficiently bright light source - with a camera,
and feeds the XY coordinates of the laser to the software in realtime, whereupon it renders the point like a pen stroke,
according to various visual parameters the user has set, so that it feels like you are drawing on a surface in realtime.
It is often used in accordance with LARGE walls and BRIGHT projectors, with canvases upwards of 75 feet in diameter,
so that it becomes a very public and political event.
The software was written in
Touch Designer,
a graphical programming environment made for realtime graphical control,
and which has been expanded into a comprehensive toolkit for digital artists.
More information can be seen at
GRLG -> Blitz Tag
and the source code can be found on the
GRLG GitHub.