Looking Outwards- Maryyann Landlord
Hyper(Reality)
This project contains a helmet which allows the user to enter a sort of digital world, surrounding the user in an alternative version of reality through the helmet. The user can navigate through the digital world created by the helmet while still interacting with the physical world outside of the helmet. It creates an odd and curious median between the two states.
I found this project interesting because of the combination between what is real and what is fabricated. The ability of the project to combine the two is very attractive for me. If further explored, the digital world can have certain surprises or friendly characters that the real world doesn’t’ contain. The user can then enter a digital game world, in which the game utilizes the real world to create levels or advances. I think to have those subtle differences in the two worlds will bring about the question of what is reality and what is invented. Is reality what we perceive in our own minds about the world of which we have control over or is it simply an observation that we accept?
I think a very effective part of this project was the way the digital world look. It had a much digitized effect in the way the image is rendered. The artist of this piece, Maxence Parache seems to involve his artwork in a lot of digital design. His website reveals different projects such as Data Visualizatino of Holborn Traffic, The Yagi Project, which can be used to listen to frequencies from satellites by relying on radio messages sent from hundreds of kilos away.
It is definitely a project of high potential and can be utilized in games or digitalized designs.
Hyper(reality) – Geffrye Museum from Maxence on Vimeo.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dodoecaudion
Dodoecaudion is an audiovisual controller assembled from infrared distance sensors, arduinos, Bluetooth, processing and osc. It manipulates sounds as people glide their hands across the openings of the spatial suspended device. The source code is open and the CAD documentation and schematics as well.
The most intriguing part of this piece for me is its geometric simple design. The design is clean and pristine and gives it an almost foreign feel because it is so simple yet creates such beautiful music. I think the inside of the piece could have been more carefully designed so the inside could be just as simple in appearance as the outside. Of course, since the piece is still in its alpha stage at the moment, there are still incomplete qualities to the piece that will be changed before it goes on production.
The artists behind Dodoecaudion create a lot of musical based interactive products, such as their panGenerator-Peacock, which is an interactive kinetic audiovisual installation shakes three panels of lights as the piece produces chaotic sounds.
DODECAUDION from ◥ panGenerator on Vimeo.
panGenerator – PEACOCK from Jakub Koźniewski on Vimeo.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Radiance
I found this project very gorgeous. Radiance is a wall consisting of acrylic flower petals that light up according to the motion of people walking around. It was assembled and installed on a standalone fireplace in the house of a family who rarely used their fireplace. The team proposed an idea of orating and lighting up the family’s life by installing this interactive light piece on top of the brick fireplace.
Although the design is fairly simplistic, I think the idea behind the piece is very compelling and beautiful. From an ordinary bland fireplace that was rarely used, the team transformed it into an art piece that would bring the family together as it lit up when members walked around the piece. I think it was a great touch to make the lights light up based upon movement, which engages interaction with the piece. By having an irregular lighting effect, the flower petals appear almost alive.
Upon exploring their website(http://www.projectione.com/), I recognized that they used a lot of lighting in their pieces and have a distinct signature of assembling many little repeated pieces to create a larger piece. I think an improvement they could have made to the Radiance piece was to have the flowers glow slightly a different color at night or during different times of the day. I think by having that variety, the piece would gain even more life. Many flowers, such as day lilies, open during the day and close at night, while other flowers just live for one day and die off in the night while other buds replace them. By giving the wall of acrylic flowers more life creates a fantastical and curious feel just as it would when one blurs the line between a manmade object and an organic living object.
Radiance from PROJECTiONE on Vimeo.