Last year, onedotzero approached Joanie Lemercier of AntiVJ to be part of one of their event, a festival they organised at empac, upstate New York, with a selection of screenings, installations and live performances. The installation, now on show at the China Millennium Monument Museum of Digital Arts onedotzero event, has received fantastic feedback and high acclaim. Just as the team published video describing the project (above), we asked Joanie few questions about the installation.

Joanie: The original plan was to fly to empac to do a 3 weeks residency, to develop a new project from scratch, which would involve projection mapping onto objects, a sound track by minimal techno producer Sleeparchive, and potentially a live performance on the day of the opening. As the video explains, the original idea and schedule felt apart when the volcano erupted, and the 3 weeks long residency turned into just 5 days on site, to setup the installation and prepare a live performance…

Continue reading.... EYJAFJALLAJÖKULL [vvvv, Events, Environment, Inspiration]

Inspired by current sampling techniques, either as a piece of hardware or as software, Ishac Bertran takes an analog route emulating the audio tape cut&paste technique by literally cutting and pasting pieces of vinyl to create samples. Ishac tried out different techniques, from wire cutter to knife, to finally settle for laser, carefully considering laser power to get the cleanest cut possible and avoid any jumps between the samples.

The best setting was to let the laser go through *almost* through the vinyl, and then crack manually the last thin layer (1). If the laser goes all the way through, it melts too much material and leaves a gap (2). If the laser doesn’t go enough deep, it’s pretty much impossible to take the piece out without creating an undesired crack (3).

Continue reading.... Analog Vinyl Sampling [Analog]

‘Dutch Wife’ is a new short film by Jesse Kanda, a visual artist based in London.

We have asked him to briefly walk us through his work process which utilizes tools such as Maxon Cinema 4D, Adobe After Effects, and Ableton Live.

JK: The whole thing started when I was walking along a canal in Clapton and saw all the greens floating around. I took these initial test photos with my phone.

Continue reading.... Dutch Wife [Inspiration]

Created by Katarzyna Kijek and Przemysław Adamski, ”In statu nascendi” captures the ”under construction” process, in this case, of global illumination pass in rendering. Where one would normally be interested in the final results, the team finds beauty in these half rendered images and their temporal qualities.

To highlight a peculiar inability to reflect reality by the film, we focus on the “struggle” of generating an image. We capture the process of rendering “in statu nascendi” (“under construction”). Therefore we try to intercept this moment of the creative process, which is the most ephemeral – a temporary, piecemeal render phases (mostly global illumination pass). In the course of animation every next frame is more accurately rendered but still far from the target appearance. By analogy to chemical processes, the term “in statu nascendi” refers to the intermediate products of chemical reactions, which can not be isolated from the environment of this reaction. They are therefore just “under construction”, and then disappear.

Sound designed by Adam Witkowski is a direct transcription of the image made with a software dedicated for blind people.
Work commissioned by The Baltic Cultural Centre as a part of exhibition “Art is generally suspicious”.

Created using Cinema 4D.

More at kijekadamski.blogspot.com

/via triangulationblog

Amongst the wonderful collection of work currently on show at the Royal College of Art, in the corner on the first floor sits an installation/object by Markus Kayser called Solar Sinter. An MA Design Products student project, Solar Sinter is probably one of the most inspiring projects this year, aiming to raise questions about the future of manufacturing and triggers dreams of the full utilisation of the production potential of the world’s most efficient energy resource - the sun.

In a world increasingly concerned with questions of energy production and raw material shortages, this project explores the potential of desert manufacturing, where energy and material occur in abundance. In this experiment sunlight and sand are used as raw energy and material to produce glass objects using a 3D printing process, that combines natural energy and material with high-tech production technology.

In August 2010 Markus Kayser took his first solar machine – the Sun-Cutter (see video below) – to the Egyptian desert in a suitcase. This was a solar-powered, semi-automated low-tech laser cutter, that used the power of the sun to drive it and directly harnessed its rays through a glass ball lens to ‘laser’ cut 2D components using a cam-guided system. In the deserts of the world two elements dominate – sun and sand. The sun offers the energy and sand an unlimited supply of silica in the form of quartz. When silicia sand is heated to melting point, once cooled solidifies as glass. This process of converting a powdery substance via a heating process into a solid form is known as sintering and has in recent years become a central process in design prototyping known as 3D printing or SLS (selective laser sintering). By using the sun’s rays instead of a laser and sand instead of resins used in modern 3D printers, Markus had the basis of an entirely new solar-powered machine and production process for making glass objects that taps into the abundant supplies of sun and sand to be found in the deserts of the world.

The Solar-Sinter was completed in mid-May and later that month Markus took this experimental machine to the Sahara desert near Siwa, Egypt, for a two week testing period. The machine and the results shown here represent the initial significant steps towards what Markus envisages as a new solar-powered production tool of great potential.

The Solar-Sinster uses ReplicatorG software, an open source 3D printing program. For more information, see replicat.org.

The project is currently on show at the Royal College of Art graduate exhibition and I agree “a ‘must-see’ event for anyone interested in twenty-first century art and design”.

24 June to 3 July 2011.
Royal College of Art
Kensington Gore, London SW7 2EU

Project Page

(Thanks to Steffen for pointing it out)

Related:
Known Unknowns [Processing, Objects] by @comkee + @ranzen at …
Dromolux [Processing, Objects] – Increasing cognitive performance …

Earlier this year we have been thinking about the concept of “curated workshops”, an opportunity to bring people together to work for a very short period of time and share their creations. These would include setting up a team, inviting few high profile individuals and opening up submissions for participation. When I was approached by Héctor Ayuso earlier this year to give a talk at OFFF, instead of talking about CAN, I thought this would be a great opportunity to do something more, a workshop, and use the workshop material as the content to drive the talk. Hector and I agreed, ‘Workshop Collaborative’ was born.

What was the aim of “Workshop Collaborative”?
1. Initiate collaborations between those that share common interests.
2. Create a playing field, both physical and virtual.
3. Allow ideas to evolve by asking questions.

When we announced the workshop back in January, we also opened to applications for participation. In total, 80 applications were submitted and 11 participants chosen by the team including Aaron Koblin, Ricardo Cabello – mr.doob, myself and Eduard Prats Molner.

The participants included:
Marek Bereza, Alba G. Corral, Andreas Nicolas Fischer, Martin Fuchs, Roger Pujol Gomez, Marcin Ignac, Rainer Kohlberger, Thomas Mann, Joshua Noble, Roger Pala and Philip Whitfield.

Programme – Single Day
09:00 – 10:00 Introductions / Teams
10:00 – 13:30 Stage 1
13:30 – 14:00 Lunch
14:00 – 19:00 Stage 2 (Completion)

Total creation time: 6.5 hours

Few weeks before the workshop, Aaron and I decided four themes we should allow to influence the work we would be making. By allowing other participants to comment and feedback on these themes we would discover areas we all want to explore. The themes included:

1. Digital Ecosystem - Build an application, an organism of information, sound and visuals, a digital ecosystem that flows through different mediums and evolves. “living system – travelling through technology and mutates through tools.

2. Analogue Digital - Explores the notions of physicality in code. Using made objects as assets to code. Scan 3d objects, cut paper and cut-out, traditional 2d scans, 3d objects scanned using flatback scanners, etc..

3. Projection Mapping - Address projection mapping conceptually. Moving away from technical demos, time to question what does it all mean; surface, source, angle, point projection, scale, form, interaction, animation.

4. Data re-embodied - Tell stories through the juxtaposition of data sources and their methods of representation. How can we create new meaning, understanding and value from reinterpretation of data.

By no means this ment that we would have to choose one over the other. The purpose was to get the feel where the interest lies amongst the participants and set up, so to say, a ‘playing field’ and allow first ideas to develop. We knew that working together for a single day we would not be able to produce anything of “finish” quality, rather focus on the subjects themselves and see what comes out.

Following the feedback, a number of keywords were derived, to summarise our interests:

ecosystem, data, scan, evolution, input, mutation, osc, node, rhythm, pattern, touch, physical, language, viewport and mobility.

Five projects developed during the 6.5 hours of work. These included Kinect > WebGL bridge, Kinect Image Evolved, Input Device, Data Flow and Receipt Racer.

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Kinect > WebGL

This project was the work of mr.doob, Marcin and Edu although other people were involved also. The task was to create a bridge between the Kinect and browser, allowing the real time feed over the web. Although aspirations were much higher than the time allowed, instead of utilising node.js server – which I understand was 99% complete anyhow, the team setled for feeding downscaled image data from cinder application using standard http requests to the three.js script which was reading the images at about 10f/s. Several rendering styles are presented below. First one is just simple point cloud done by Marcin for debugging while the rest was done by mr.doob using his amazing Three.js engine.

Download .js code here.

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Kinect Image Evolved

Simultaneously while Ricardo was working on the .js part, Marcin was exploring different ways of kinect image representation. In attempt to get away from standard kinect point cloud, we developed idea of trying slitscan effect with the point cloud. What this means is that the kinect point cloud was dispersed along the time lapse, different bands representing different moment in time. Likewise, Macin also was exploring what happens if the point location was reversed when particular depth was reached. What you see in the videos below are both effects.

Code available soon.

Thomas and Andreas were also testing different tools to manipulate kinect image. Meshlab, Blender were used to pull kinect point clouds and convert them into meshes which could then be render, distorted, split, etc.

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Input Device

Marcin was also working on ways to control the input, ie how one could interact with the Kinect point cloud. We were toying with the idea of being able to assign different devices over OSC to different kinect body parts. This would allow for each individual to be assigned unique element of te point cloud and to interact with it. The first step was to use simple gyroscope datam sent from an iPhone over OSC. The video below shows what is happening. Likewise, Rainer and Roger were working on the iPhone application that would send the OSC data. Rather than just utilising gyro or accelerometer, Rainer was exploring different forms of interaction with the device, seeing whether a language could be evolved, one that would somehow enhance emotional attachment the kinect body parts. The videos below show and instrument like application that also has audio feedback.

Code available soon.

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Data Flow

With all the data moving, Marek was wondering if the input and output are in same medium, you can compare them, apples for apples, what would happen. Marek looked at the process of the loop by examining the image obtained by subtracting the initial input from the output so we’re just left with the parts that change. For the loop algorithm, jpeg compression was chosen because it was easily available in oF and ubiquitous enough to warrant investigation. The boxy images are a result of feeding the jpeg “high” quality compression back into itself and subtracting it from the original. The finer images are using the “best” compression setting. Then Marek tried the same thing with sound (using logic), using first the original sound, then the encoded and seeing what is left. You can hear all the sounds below.

Original / OFFFCAN Workshop Collaborative by filipvisnjic Encoded / OFFFCAN Workshop Collaborative by filipvisnjic Difference / OFFFCAN Workshop Collaborative by filipvisnjic

Code available soon.

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Receipt Racer

The receipt racer combines different in and output devices into a complete game. It was made by Martin, Philip and Joshua utilising a receipt printer, a common device you can see at every convenient store, small projector, sony ps controller and a mac running custom openFrameworks application. Print is a static medium, that’s why, Philip, Martin and Josh explain, it was an intriguing challenge to create an interactive game with it. First the team tried to do it only with the printer as the visual representation but that seemed rather impossible. But then Joshua Noble came up with a small projector, perfect to project a car onto a preprinted road. There is no game without an input device. So they were lucky enough as at least one of them always carries a gamepad around. The cables connect back to the laptop running an openframeworks application the team wrote parts of. The app was entirely programmed during the workshop. Internally it runs something like the basic js game. Only a car driving on a randomly generated race track. Then it broadcasts its components to the external devices, prints the street and guesses where the car’s projection is supposed to be to perform the hit test. That’s the trickiest part. Everything has to be in sync and needs some calibration in the beginning. The paper also has a little bit of a mind of it’s own and tends to slide around or curl. But that’s nothing some duct tape and cardboard can’t fix.

It was a lucky day. Somehow everything was just lying around, waiting to be used. Even the stand and this plastic thing you would normally use to put in your name on a conference. Even the timing was perfect. Right at the end of the workshop we finished adding the details like a little score and the YOU CRASHED TEXTS.

Project Page (code available)

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On Saturday we presented the creations. Regardless of the fact that Erik Spiekermann was presenting in the other OFFF room, we had a full theatre (500 ppl estimate) including another room where our talk could be watched on a large screen.

Photo above by Arseny Vesnin

CAN would like to thank all the participants at the workshop as well as Aaron and Ricardo for taking time off their busy schedules to take part of the workshop. For more information on the workshop and all future information/code/links see creativeapplications.net/offf2011

Photos by Jason Vancleave

We leave you with OFFF Barcelona 2011 Main Titles made for OFFF by PostPanic (full screen recommended).

Organic Electric by Jason Krugman is a series of works composed of hand soldered LED mesh, folded and shaped into 3-dimensional illuminated forms, animated and touch responsive.

It is an exploration into the possibilities of 3-dimensional electro-luminescent LED structures. There are myriad possibilites for LEDs as a physical media, going far beyond their traditional use in Times Square type, 2-dimensional information displays. The concept of LED Weaving, is new and uncharted territory. Expanding on the custom switches that are the basic unit of “Firefly”, Organic Electric seeks to create organically shaped, responsive LED forms, rooted in analog and digital building techniques.

Project Page

/via Zach

On daily basis we come across images that are built using various code techniques, whether this be pixelation, glitch, particle fields, swarms, reaction diffusion, looking that these images on Wired Science, it’s amazing to see the similarities between the works we create and the environment we inhabit. Even more apparent when we consider that they bare no correlation to one another and the large gap in scale that exists between them. Likewise, the images below appear strangely “Digital”…

Agriculture is one of the oldest and most pervasive human impacts on the planet. Estimates of the land surface affected worldwide range up to 50 percent. But while driving through the seemingly endless monotony of wheat fields in Kansas may give you some insight into the magnitude of the change to the landscape, it doesn’t compare to the view from above.

more on Wired Science

„Start from the Beginning“ – Egyptrixx / Bible Eyes LP (Night Slugs 2011)
Animated short by A. N. Fischer / Datdatdat. You should watch it in HD on Vimeo.

The video examines the relationship between the simulated image and its physical manifestation. The landscape appearing in the video references one of Fischer´s relief sculptures (http://anfischer.com/new-relief-in-progress).

The sculpture is magnified and distorted by the soundscape created by David. As time progresses the landscape becomes increasingly complex and distorted and finally changes its aggregate state to liquid. The shapes of the polygons appear in contrast to the fluid with which they collide. The 3d model was textured with photos of the physical sculpture, which was carved from a block of mdf with a cnc-miling machine.

Project Page
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Egyptrixx on MySpace
Night Slugs on MySpace
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A. N. Fischer

Whilst a large number of visual artists are focused on large scale projections, it is refreshing to see when individuals explore possibilities of small objects, something tangible, seeing what is possible and what does it all mean.

Such is the work of the work from David Hall‘s studio class in IDAS Hongik:

Each artists developed low polygon forms from basic primitives and through a series of deformations and replications produced a structure with minimal data in Maya.These structures where then developed (made planar) in order for them to be printed two dimensionally.

This enabled the surface to be re-constructed backto its original 3D form. As the object exists in 3D in both digital and analogue form this allows us to project animations and graphic back onto the object from the digital version with relative accuracy. In effect the form exists in digital and analogue spaces simultaneously.

The result is this wonderful window installation at the corner gallery, Samchung Dong, Seoul, Korea.

More images on Opi@te’s flickr photostream + see the process video at the bottom of this post.

See also Dualism [Cinder, Objects]