VSERPI as a Face: Building a Wearable Glitch Broadcast Rig

current projects
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This all started when I saw a video of this absolute legend that was going around at night leaving large CRT televisions on people’s porches while wearing a CRT on their head.

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This inspired me to take this to the next level as a costume for a local anime/horror convention. Instead of just gutting the TV why not replace the screen with a modern LCD which opens up all kinds of potentials? Initially I was just thinking of showing iconic things from pop culture like Jobes avatar freaking out in Lawnmower Man, Cains avatar from RoboCop 2, Max Headroom and the parodies from Cafe80s in BTTF2, OG Doomguy face cam, etc…

Then I had a stroke of inspiration. What if I had a hidden camera and when people interacted with me I switched to a live feed of them getting manipulated with the VSERPI eco sphere? That’s something people at a horror con would love. So I have the base idea now I need to start working on logistics.

I need to be able to see so the hidden camera will constantly be fed to a first gen Sony 3D headset.

I need an easy way to operate the rig so i’ll be managing all the screen output through resolume and to control Resolume/VSERPI I will be turning a NES Powerglove into a MIDI controller assigning the buttons to scene selection and the finger resistors to VSERPI parameters. For further parameter manipulation I will be outfitting the glove with a 3 axis MPU-6050 accelerometer.

To communicate with people I don’t want to break character and just start speaking aloud. To solve this I want to use a throat conduction mic in conjunction with speech to text software that will overlay on top of whatever’s playing on the screen. This should allow me to whisper and have whatever I say be displayed on the screen. Of course I’ll make it print out like it’s a glitched out early terminal. ^-^

I aim for this to be a build thread documenting the entire process. I welcome any and all discussions and suggestions especially if you have any ideas for iconic or even niche things to display on the screen.

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brilliant idea.
i had an idea long ago that it’d be funny to have a band where the lead singer was always hiding somewhere off stage but with a live feed of their face all glitched out on a big old crt that got wheeled out onto the stage on an old av cart.

id say bypass powerglove as midi controller and just use spi or i2c thru the pins. it’ll probably already be an annoying issue to have to deal with powering video sources thru the usb

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I was actually going to use a Lenovo y700-15isk I no longer use for the hardware. It was my VJ rig for a long time and should handle everything I’m looking to do and the screen should do the trick. I’m either going to use your Windows DSK or use the Debian based PI desktop OS and use bottles for Resolume. Still haven’t decided on that but I’ll be testing both.

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