This week unreal tested me, and I kept running into errors that led to hours of youtube tutorials, documentation, office hours, and bothering classmates. Things finally started to come together at the end of the week, and I’m getting to a place where I’m happy.
Problems I’m still having:
When I press, play the camera gets shot into space, and I can’t move.
My laptop keeps crashing – I ended up working on the production computers on campus.
I don’t fully understand the error “Texture streaming pool over budget.”
Successes:
I isolated my world to a small portion of the map – I was getting overwhelmed trying to fill the map.
I was able to import a height map of Adirondack Park to give my world shape.
I love how my new world is shaping up and am excited to continue working on it.
This semester-long project was in collaboration with Philip Cadoux, Pauline Ceraulo, and Sean Zhu. We were tasked with using actual research to create an interactive and educational museum installation.
The project is based on the research entitled “Centennial response of Greenland’s three largest outlet glaciers” by David and Denise Holland of the Courant Institute at NYU and the Center for Global Sea Level Change at NYU Abu Dhabi.
Our installation focus was to introduce the viewer to general topics of how this complex research is conducted through climate models, chaos theory, and tipping points.
Activation 1: Double Pendulum – Demonstrating the fundamentals of chaos theory.
Chaos Theory – What do viewers need to know?
One action can have a large-scale, snowballing effect on the larger system.
There are patterns in the chaos that we can use to estimate whether changes/events.
Glacial melting is a phenomenon closely tied to weather and chaos theory.
Production of Double Pendulum:
Orginal CAD drawing
Playtesting
After building a full-scale finished piece, we discovered a flaw in our design. We needed more bearings to reduce friction, a tighter fit for our bearings so they wouldn’t shift while rotating, and finally, we needed to install shoulder bolts instead of regular bolts to reduce friction again.
The second round of construction more bearings and a more precise fit.
Finishing work.
Finishing work II.
Final Piece:
The final piece has a battery-powered Arduino attached to each arm of freedom. The Arduino uses an accelerometer to detect orientation and sends the information via Bluetooth to our site, presenting the viewer with their own chaotic system drawing. The viewer can capture the drawing on their phone via a QR code that pops up.
Drawing Examples:
Activation 2: Tipping Point
Our goal is to demonstrate the seriousness of tipping points. Once you reach any of these thresholds, the system can be pushed into an entirely new and potentially irreversible state.
This activation is a carnival-influenced web game similar to High Striker, where the player uses frantic button pressing against a difficult system to score points. The game can be played here.
For our Video Sculpture final, Noah and I decided to re-work our 2nd project Fitting In.
Description:
Using the 1960’s artists collective, the Chicago Imagists, as a reference Fitting In explores the notion of accumulating to our surroundings. The viewer distorts their own body to fit within the exaggerated silhouettes. After performing for the frame, the viewer is then presented a six-second video clip of their actions.
Fitting In allows the viewer to confront their own experience of fitting into societal “traditions,” “practices,” and “norms.” The silhouettes are intentionally floating, distorted, or exaggerated, making them impossible to replicate, further emphasizing the endless struggle to keep up that many face. We believe that the impact of seeing one’s self will be more significant than presenting abstracted characters.
Inspiration:
Harry Who – Six Chicago-based artists from the School of the Art Institute – Jim Falconer, Art Green, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, Karl Wirsum, and Suellen Rocca.
Production:
For this version, we decided to scale the entire project up, and instead of using a projector, we opted to build the entire piece around a 48-inch monitor.
Harry Who often used alternative framing for their pieces. We decided to build our frame out of foam core and wrap it in fake wood paneling to stick with that style.
After completing the frame production, our Isadora sketch was re-worked to fit the new aspect ratios of the monitor.
Final Piece:
In our original piece, we projected on hand-painted acrylic sheets. To keep that aesthetic, we made painted layers in photoshop to layer over the video feeds. This broke up the glare and rich color of the monitor.
Interaction:
Output:
Going Forward:
Both Noah and I want to push this piece further and bring the interaction into Unity. We believe that the user triggers and mapping will be much cleaner and the overall software will be much more stable.
For this piece, I wanted to continue down the path of breaking down an image to the pixel level. I have been thinking about how society is inundated with imagery and wanted to find new beauty in scenes that I’ve seen over and over again.
I import an image into the P5JS script that reads each pixel and prints its individual RGB color value, for example, 60,96, 76. The values will then be printed from left to right, top to bottom. The first iteration was in black and white and produced beautiful randomized patterns of data.
To take the piece a step further, I wanted to add color to each pixel by applying the referenced RGB value to the written outnumber.
Finally, I wanted to take the piece to print. Making the text small enough to be invisible at normal viewing distances but legible at close up reminded me of grain in an image.
Introducing color into the print.
Font size 21 – Too big.
Font size 10 – Still too big.
Font size 8 – Perfect.
After I sent the script to print at full size, which shook out to be roughly 10 x 45.
Below are a series of tighter views of the data.
Below are the imported images.
While experimenting with the text size, I noticed that if I did not adjust the canvas size, the pixel values’ blending would make an abstract image. To wrap this project up, I wanted to make a digital version that the viewer could make their own piece and save it. To do this, I added a slider that adjusts the text size and a save button that saves the current canvas and exports it.
