Dusk in action on the opening night of Underbelly Arts.
Underbelly Arts kicked off last night with an opening party and a successful launch of Dusk. We were all happy (and relived) to see the project come together, and it was especially nice to watch people playing with the work.
Today marks the final day of Underbelly Arts, with a public festival event. We’ll be on site for an artist talk at 4pm, but if you can’t make it along, I’ll be putting together a wrap up of the whole project in the coming days. In the meantime, there are more videos on Flickr.
Just a quick video tonight: a test of the faux lighting I created in Quartz Composer and Max/MSP for Dusk. It’s far from perfect, but great to finally see projected onto physical objects for the first time.
Thankfully, the perspective issues I had worried about earlier didn’t really come into play, as it seemed the point of view created in Quartz Composer is similar to that of the projector. The addition of a colour to the Lighting module in Quartz Composer also brought a nice ‘dusk’ feel Dusk.
For the first time, we saw what will become the basis for our fireflies projected onto the warehouse floor. These little fellas are called ‘boids’ and at this stage look like a certain male reproductive cell. They’ll take a more complete form soon.
As you can see in the video above, Lukasz has programmed the boids (in openFrameworks) to simulate flocking behaviour: they prefer to move in groups, but when faced with a physical object – in this case, our papier mâché rocks – they will split in various directions, creating new flocks. The size and shape of the physical objects need to be traced out for the program, however camera motion tracking of people in the space will have a similar impact on the boids, allowing participants to herd the fireflies into different areas of the projection.
Whilst not true ‘surround sound’, the audio for Dusk will be presented through 4 speakers, placed around the installation. One of the goals of Dusk is to create a level of immersion for the viewer, to try and surround them with sound and vision. To build upon this alternate reality, I built a simple Max/MSP patch in Ableton Live which will pan audio between 4 different Return tracks. Each of these tracks output audio to a distinct channel (speaker), creating a controllable quadraphonic space.
I built this patch (now available for download on maxforlive.com) now using some of the elements from JuanSOLO’s ‘SEND Control’ device, but instead of taking information from a MIDI controller or similar, my patch receives OSC messages, passing x and y coordinates and mirroring this movement with panned sound. Sound design is going to be handled by Eli, while the panning coordinates will come from Lukasz‘ flocking fireflies, created in openFrameworks.
Day 2: our first major hurdle(s)… Last night we tested the projector inside the warehouse space. At 5000 lumens, brightness was not a problem, but the limited throw certainly was. The model of projector we’re using needs a lot of distance (throw) between it and the surface to be projected on, to create a large enough image for us to work with.
Whilst there is a lot of space in the warehouse, we couldn’t figure out a way to give us enough of a distance for a top-down projection that would feel immersive. The best we managed was around 4m x 3m, and once the area includes physical objects, this doesn’t leave much room for people to move.
An orthographic drawing. No perspective here. Image: GameTrailers.com
As part of our Underbelly Arts project, Dusk, I am working on a way to create the illusion of moving lighting on objects. In fact, the way I’m approaching the task is not so much about lighting, but instead generating false shadows on and around objects.
This ties in with the work I have been doing as part of my major university project piece this year, so the technology remains the same: Quartz Composer (QC) generates visuals and Max/MSP controls parameters within the QC patches.
Danger Shield components. Reminds me of pulling toys to pieces as a child.
Now that I’m on break from uni (at least in the sense of official classes), I’ve had a chance to sit down with my Ardunio, a new soldering iron and the unbuilt Danger Shield. Aside from some basic cable-fixing during a previous life as a roadie, my soldering knowledge is nil and I was definitely apprehensive about poking a hot bit of metal around electronics components.
With the help of Zach Hoeken’s walkthrough (the maker of the original Danger Shield. Note that this model is slightly different from the SparkFun version I have), it all went fairly smoothly – if a little slow. With the exception of putting grounding pins in the wrong position – and the painful process of de-soldering – everything worked as it should and I now have a bunch of sensors and inputs to take readings of all kinds.
Twinings tea boxes make nice props. Thankfully, Nigella is nowhere to be seen.
Emulating lighting will be a real focus for my end of year uni project and an upcoming installation piece (more on that very soon, once the official promo goes live). I need to create something that is capable to at least initially trick the eye into believing a real light source is casting shadows, but still remain CPU-friendly so that these shapes can respond in real-time to the movement of people.
As my own point of reference, I setup a simple, single light source stage, with small boxes. The idea being that I can get a sense of how light and shadow move around geometric shapes. It does sound fairly basic, but this is proving quite difficult to create convincingly, and as I delve deeper into what’s become a complex world of OpenGL and GLSL shaders, I’m on the lookout to keep things as simple as possible.
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