City Symphonies

City Symphonies is a project that re-imagines what the sounds from vehicles could be as electric cars becomes more common and internal combustion engine cars are phased out. Many electric cars produce artificial engine sounds to make them sound like a gasoline-powered car, but this concept proposes sound generation that depends on a car’s relationship with other vehicles and the surrounding environment.  The simulation of the vehicle movement was performed with Processing, and MaxMSP was used to connect audio signals with each car. Sounds are emitted depending on proximity with other cars and pedestrians. Complex chords would be heard at denser intersections, and single notes would be heard in sparse traffic areas. This is an interesting idea that replaces the traditional honks and engine revs with a musical score unique to the place and time. The new sounds seem like something from outer space, and to me, they replace one type of cacophony with another. I don’t quite understand how the tone frequencies are chosen, though. Should there be another aspect instead of it solely based on proximity — like more aural harmony if traffic is flowing safely and more cacophony if an unsafe traffic condition begins to appear?

Angles Mirror

This 7 ft x 7 ft interactive triangular “mirror” creates an image based on linear rotation instead of reflected light, and uses a system involving motors, a video camera, a microcontroller, and software written in C++. The space surrounding the person is shown as horizontal lines, and the yellow arms pivot with various angles to produce a 3D image. It’s interesting to produce a “mirror” image using this method with arms that have a fixed hue/brightness instead of using reflection or color, and the resulting image changes based on the position of the viewer. Also, using these yellow arms as rotating pixels to form new shapes brings additional insight into what our eyes will interpret and process as an image.

This week both projects are going to be related to the data visualization assignment.

The first project is On and Off the Street Grid (Seth Kadish, 2014). The author is a data scientist an admirer of regular grids (specially when oriented towards cardinal directions) so basically It consists of the analysis and comparison of the orientation of the grid of different North American counties. After evaluating all the azimuth of the streets in the specified area he creates a diagram with their distribution using bins of 5 degrees.  For me the most interesting part of this project is this diagram and its capacity to filter the complexity of a feature of a grid into a very simple representation.

berlin

paris

new york

The second project is Anagrammes graphiques de plans de villes or Les Villes Rangees (Armelle Caron, 2005/2008). It also deals with maps, bit instead of the grid map, it considers its negative: the building blocks (or in the case of the countries, the land blocks). Firstly, building blocks are represented with only one colour, while grids, rivers or other elements are dissolved in a white background. Then, Canon deconstructs and decontextualizes the building parts with a very rigid system of classification. These parts are reorganized and clustered in a white rectangular plan similar to the original, based on their specific shapes and sizes. Their characteristics determine their position in series of rows. It is almost as if the geographic and urban maps gave place to a kit of parts, a military parade or a scientific classification. However, it is clear that the objective procedure is not used for the sake of curiosity (as in the first project) but to support an aesthetic statement: a mix of distance or even estrangement with the configuration and representation of our territory.

Fabulous is an interactive installation. The player uses the spherical object to interact with a projection of the night sky, and by using sound, the player can locate stars. There is a sense of beauty in this project, but the sound mechanic does not tie in with the theme, and there is considerable amount of lag between reality and projection, thus taking away the magic. The discovery of shapes by drawing them out in space is fascinating though. It reminds me of the falling words by Camille Utterback, which also uses motion tracking and projection to reveal and discover some piece.

Eyjafjallajokull uses clever light projections onto a mesh drawn onto the wall to achieve 3D effects. The lighting and the fact that it is actually a 2D surface presents a great sense of discovery and magic to this piece. I do wish the piece is interactive though. In the end, it is outshined by Bot and Dolly’s Box, which also uses projection and clever lighting to achieve 3D effects on projected surfaces, but theirs is performative, with live human actors, thus giving it a stronger sense of impossibility.

Cubepix Demo Test – by Xavi’s Lab

I am interested in doing something with projection mapping and mixing hardware like Arduino. I really liked this project because is a very good combination of both hardware use and projection mapping. I dont like the fact that the installation is supper loud. I know it is thanks to the motors, but If I end up using both projection mapping and Arduinos, I would try to minimize the amount of motors it had to keep the volume as low as possible. Apart from that i really like the effect the boxes do when they are rotating! It looks very cool. I also liked how they added the kinect as an interactive input. I would definitely add one too. I really think that some experiences like this the kinect adds a very special touch.

FLOW 1 | KINECT PROJECTOR DANCE

This project is more focused on kinect and projection mapping. As mentioned earlier, I feel when it comes to tracking, the kinect makes it easier to create interesting things with the depth camera. I really like all the effects the dances create. It looks like they are the ones disturbing the environment and i really like how that looks. I also liked the minimal color pallet used. I felt like the high contrast makes a stronger connection between he dancers and the disruption they are creating in the background and the mapping. I have seen many similar effects to this one, so I would definitely try to innovate the canvas, maybe by adding a real static object that will add to the canvas or combine it with LED or some type of sensor that would alter the canvas, making it less flat