After all the work that Lukasz, Eli and I put into Dusk, I thought a quick video about the work was in order. In the artist talks at Underbelly Arts, I often found it difficult to explain to people concisely just how the project works – hopefully this video fills in the gaps somewhat.
Although we were proud of what we accomplished in the short space of time we had at Underbelly Arts, this first incarnation of the Dusk project does feel unfinished. A huge benefit of taking part in Underbelly Arts is the opportunity to document our work in this way, so that it might have another life at sometime in the future.
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.
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.
Stop-motion setup of The Finders Keepers markets at CarriageWorks in May, 2010.
The first angryPixel production was released into the wild at The Finders Keepers‘ talk at Creative Sydney tonight. Let’s just say it didn’t go according to plan and we’ll chalk that one up to experience. The video above is how it should have appeared.
Video Capture: Lukasz Karluk
Post Production: Scott Brown
Music Composition: Eli Murray (Track: gentleforce – “Learning to Forgive”)
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.
Also a nice change, was having an audio extraordinaire supplied by CarriageWorks to look after live sound. This meant I could post photos live all day with my spiffy new D90. The camera is only a few days old, but already proving an excellent purchase.
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