100 Lights/Pavillion

1 Light

Suspended in mid-air

10 Lights

Placed in the 8 corners of the room as well as on the floor and ceiling

100 Light

Placed covering 1 adjacent floor and ceiling, to create an extremely bright illuminating corner of the room

Pavillion

Since Singaporeans are infamous for their love of queueing for things, for the pavillion it could be a performance art of sorts with regular everyday Singaporeans placed in a long queue which would continue for a comically long distance!

Study of Spaces

Elastic Heart (Screen)

In this music video by Sia which features Shia Lebeouf and dancer Maddie Ziegler, the entire video takes place in a single space which is a large cage pictured above.

While it might seem simple, a space like this can hold a lot of power. For me when I first saw the music video years ago I was blown away by how the dancers had made use of this minimal bare space and turned it into so much more than just a song and dance.

In this case, the connotations behind the cage are that of trapped birds/animals and this is fitting because in the video, the dancers are interacting with one another in a manner that appears to be raw and feral, similar to how wild animals would interact.

Since this is a screen based space, what is important is also the angle of the camera and how the cinematographer chooses to capture the space. In a way, the cameraman is the person who is controlling how we navigate through this space. Hence the use of camera angle is interesting as well in Elastic Heart because at many times, the camera appears to be capturing the image from outside of the cage peering in through the bars. 

The symbolism behind the cage is even more apparent later on in the video as the younger female dancer realises she is able to leave between the bars of the cage and attempts to help the other dancer escape frantically, almost as if the space is symbolic of his inability to escape what confines him despite the efforts of those around him.

This space has really got me thinking about what it means to make a space effective in the context of screen-based performance art. A minimal space like this, with just some metal bars forming the shape of a large cage, can be very effective in communicating to the viewers any subliminal messages behind the performance itself.

Hansel and Gretel (Physical)

The main installation space for Hansel and Gretel by Ai Weiwei and Herzog & de Meuron is a huge empty space that is populated by images formed through overhead projection onto the floors. This is striking to me as it is rare that video content is projected on the floor instead of on walls and it really gives an illusion of more depth and more crowdedness in the room.

Since taking Kristy’s projection mapping class this semester, I am really interested in how projection or projection mapping can really change a bare space and turn it into something otherworldly and strange. Hansel and Gretel is a good example of such a space. The room is dark which adds to the ominous and dangerous feel of the installation, and allows for effective projection.

In this installation, something interesting is that drones are used to fly around the space which serves several purposes. The first is to collect footage of participants of the installation, which is then fed back to the projectors and projected onto the participants themselves with red boxes drawn on different body parts to mimic CCTV cameras and facial recognition. In this way, participants are encouraged to interact with the space because of what is projected on it.

Secondly, the drones also serve the purpose of creating a soundscape in the space which I thought was super interesting and authentic way of feeding a soundscape into a space, using the actual items rather than recordings played through speakers. The attention to sound in this space also reminds us that a space is not just about the objects or architecture in it but also the sensorial elements which turn the space from just a mere place into an experience.

Faces Places Review

Before this film, I was unfamiliar with the works of both JR and Agnes. I had known of JR because he had been mentioned a few times before in class, but I had never really taken the time to do research on him, so this film was also my introduction to both the artists. Upon hearing about this film and seeing the poster, I assumed that it would be a typical feel-good story about a friendship between an elderly lady and a younger man, and that the focal point of the narrative would be about how the age gap between them made them different, but I was wrong!

For me, Faces Places was not so much of a documentary and more like listening in to a conversation between two close friends. The film is about Agnes Varda, an 88 year old filmmaker, and street artist/photographer JR, and their travels around France in a bid to document the faces of regular people in regular places by photographing them, printing it and mounting the “faces” onto architecture. Rather than being a documentation of the travels, I suppose Faces Places is a documentary in the sense that it is a documentation of the friendship between JR and Varda, as well as a documentation of the stories of the people whose photos are being mounted in the film.

Watching the film got me thinking about the purpose of large-scale public art, particularly in the case of projection mapping. I had never seen the connection between public architectural art and projection mapping before, because before this I had always associated the former with graffiti and vandalism (yes I’m very Singaporean HAHA). Now, however, I realise that in some ways, painting/mounting a still image onto a large architecture is even more impressive than projecting a video. How do you capture in a single still image, the amount of narrative and emotion that a video could convey?

Another thing that I found interesting while watching the documentary was that I unwittingly started thinking about the differences between French and Singaporean culture. In particular, how people in both countries would react to large scale public arts that involved them. Near the beginning of the film, when JR and Agnes were mounting the first photograph onto the wall at the front of the old lady’s house, when she first came outside and saw the image she was moved to tears. I remember thinking that if this had been in Singapore and someone had printed the face of an elderly lady onto a HDB flat, I think most elderly Singaporeans would be very unhappy about that!

I did find the ending of the film confusing, as I didn’t understand what was going on when JR and Agnes visited the house of her friend and didn’t receive a warm welcome, just a cryptic written message which brought Agnes to tears. It made me curious to find out more about the backstory between their friendship, and I’ll probably go research further into it so I guess the film was successful in piquing my interest HAHAHA

All in all, this film was what I expected and more! It was nice to watch JR and Agnes interacting and their friendship was heartwarming. It also got me thinking a lot about public art and different cultures’ reception to it.

Motion Capture Workshop

When Kristy told us that we would be attending the workshop with Prof Biju, I was pleasantly surprised. Motion capture was something that I had never thought of trying out before, and I was curious to know how it could be incorporated into projection mapping because I always assumed it was strictly used for films and animation.

To help us understand the mechanics behind motion capture projection mapping, Prof Biju gave us some knowledge on how cameras work. While I was confused at first as to why we were talking about cameras, it was in fact vital to think about how they work in relation to projectors because the 2 are actually more similar than we thought (the projector is putting out an image while a camera receives one).

Prof Biju and Naga had set up a projector and some markers, and using these they managed to show us a very simple example of mocap mapping using 3D software. This was pretty mindblowing, I had always thought of projection mapping as something which is static and that the content which is projected on the surface relies solely on the video which the creator has input into the projector. With mocap mapping, it adds another layer of interactivity as the viewer/performer is now able to have some level of agency in deciding what is going to happen in the projection. It’s something that I feel is really worth pursuing as an interactive media artist because it’s a great way to incorporate performance art elements or audience interaction in a way that is technologically current and exciting!

One example of combining motion capture and projection mapping in a public setting is the video above, by NuFormer who does a 3D projection mapping with a character who is animated through live motion capture in order to create a narrative video. I was surprised to find out that this project was done 7 years ago, meaning that this technology is not new so I’m surprised it’s not been more widely done yet! As they have stated in the video, “Each Mocap Mapping is tailor-made and always a unique experience” and I agree with this sentiment. Whether it is for a performance art, audience interaction or for creating a narrative video, the live nature of motion capture means that the video will not be the same at any 2 points in time as it is dependent on the human input of the performers or audiences.

I really enjoyed the workshop and I would definitely research deeper into mocap mapping and try to incorporate it into my future works! Thanks to Kristy for organising and Prof Biju and Naga for conducting this eye-opening workshop!

Final Project

Concept Ideation

When Kristy told us that we were able to do mapping for the CHC building, the scenario given to us was that such artworks could potentially be used for events like the opening of the Yunnan Garden which is currently under renovation. Hence, I had that in mind while doing the ideation for this project. I chose to do the CHC mapping as I wanted to have a chance to learn how architectural projection mapping works, as well as get some practice on After Effects, so it was perfect for me.

During my research, I discovered that the plans for renovating the Yunnan Garden were that the school was planning to turn it into a park for public use, rather than just a plot of decorative land in the middle of campus. Going with that theme, I decided to go for an friendly illustrative style of video as I felt it was something which could be appreciated by all age groups, also as I felt this was a style of video I had not really seen on architectural projection mapping before so I wanted to try something different. My image references and inspirations can be seen from my previous post!

To decide what assets I wanted to have, I decided to dig deeper into my research as well as make use of the knowledge I had gained from my 3 years of being a student at NTU. I wanted to incorporate things that were quintessentially NTU, such as the myriad of animals we have around campus, as well as other things that were iconic to Yunnan Garden like the Chinese pagodas and the entrance arch.

I took a visit to the CHC to view the exhibitions there. I didn’t manage to learn a lot about the garden specifically because they were more focused on the history of Chinese in Singapore in general as well as the history of the campus as a whole. However, I decided to take a visit to the CHC library as well and while there, I chanced upon a picture book on the history of NTU which gave me some insights into what life was like for a Nanyang University student back when it was a new uni!

From this, I learned that while nowadays most students wouldn’t even bother visiting the Yunnan Garden (even before it underwent renovations), in the past it was really a hub for student activities and students would go there to relax in their free time between lessons. I wanted to recreate that kind of scene in my composition, showing a lot of human activity and recreation, similar to how people would visit Yunnan Garden for recreational purposes in the past. This also ties in with the school’s aims to promote Yunnan Garden as a place for members of public to visit for recreational activities.

Process & Outcomes

I started off by illustrating the individual elements that I wanted to have, and laid it out in a composition as seen above. This helped me to set the mood of my animations, which was one that I wanted to be fun and cheerful. As mentioned, I wanted to pay homage to the student life at the old Nanyang University while at the same time taking note of Yunnan Garden’s new status as a public park, hence I mixed certain elements from the old Nanyang University (arch, pagoda, rambutan and durian trees) with animals that could be found in NTU today and also illustrations of different people doing various activities.

I decided to do my video in the style of a cinemagraph, so I planned to have the individual assets do subtle looping animations that could then be placed in the video composition to create a scene with different elements to pique viewers’ interests. This is because I had the idea that if this video were to be actually played at the opening event of Yunnan Garden, it could act as a backdrop to the event and be kept running while people went about partaking in activities at the event. Hence I didn’t want the video to be too flashy or narrative so a cinemagraph was a perfect example to use.

I started to animate the individual assets:

Reflections

This was actually fun to do and I’m glad I chose to try my hand at architectural projection mapping! I couldn’t have done it without the kind help of Reynard and Chris, so thanks to them for providing us with the After Effects template as well as assistance with Green Hippo and mapping the 3d model.

One thing I realised while doing this project was that because we were doing the mapping on a small 3d model rather than an actual building, it meant that the amount of space we had to work with on the model was limited because if the animations were too small it wouldn’t be seen as compared to projecting on an actual building which is much bigger and we could afford to have smaller assets (scale wise). Hence I couldn’t quite achieve what I set out to do in the beginning which was create a bigger cinemagraph composition with smaller assets doing different motions around the building. However this forced me to really think about how I wanted to use the limited space I had, and as Kristy mentioned it also meant that the animations would have been human-sized if they had been to scale so I didn’t mind it as well!

To work further on this project, what I would do would be to go back to the individual animations and polish them a little further so the movements could be more seamless. I would also think of more ways that I could incorporate architectural elements of the building into my video composition.

That’s all for my project! Thank you Kristy and classmates for a fun semester and hope to see everyone around!

Cardboard Kingdom: Digital

Cardboard Kingdom

by Bridgel, Chloe, Mavis and Viena

About the artwork

Cardboard Kingdom is a recreation of the fascinations and perceptions one has about the world during childhood. When you’re small, everything around you just seems bigger, and a simple room could become a castle in your imagination. In this interactive installation, we have tapped into their memories from early childhood to recreate an innocence and simplicity that could only be possessed by a child.

Reminiscing on our childhood days where we were content with playing with the simplest of materials in the smallest of spaces, we have created a child’s playhouse simply using recycled materials incorporated with interactive digital elements. Cardboard Kingdom aims to gift participants something that is rare in today’s world: a little bit of pure childhood fun, reminding us that happiness can be found in the simplest of things.

Digital Project Planning

Since we had already crafted all of our furniture and household appliances during the analog phase of our project, for this next phase we were able to focus solely on coding and digital interactivity.

Knowing that we already had a lot of tactile and scent components from our analog project, we decided to make it a multi-sensorial experience by adding visual and audio elements using lights, sounds, sensors and simple projection mapping. The feedback and observations from the analog project was also a gauge for us to decide which appliances/furniture worked and which didn’t, hence the choice was made to remove the toilet bowl and include a sofa for the living room instead.

Digital Project Process

Visual Appearance

4 large walls were created by sticking separate pieces of cardboard together. The walls were then placed together held up by pillars to create a makeshift “room”.

We decided to paint the entire house including walls and furniture white, to make it look a little more interesting as the colour of the raw cardboard is quite dark and looks a little too shabby! The walls and furniture were painted using house paint as we wanted to let participants draw on the objects using coloured chalk and the house paint would give the chalk a base to stick on.

Bathtub

In order to create a more “realistic” bathtub compared to the analog version, we decided to make the taps of the bathtub work by connecting them to potentiometers via Arduino, and these potentiometers controlled audio output (through the use of MAXMsp).

The potentiometers provide a range of values into Arduino, and MAXMsp receives these values from Arduino through serial 9600, and then used through MAXMsp we controlled the speed of the sound (water flowing). Similarly, we made use of this same concept to control the brightness of the LED strip that was placed in the bathtub, under the foam peanuts.

Sink

The sink used an identical Arduino code to the bathtub, using a potentiometer to control the speed of the audio that played on a loop.

Stove

For the stove, we wanted to incorporate the idea of what we did for the analog together with the digital idea, hence we decided on the use of pressure sensors. For analog, audience were able to “create their own recipe” with the use of vinegar and baking soda. In the digital aspect, they are now able to “cook” their recipe, as through the pressure sensors, when the pots are placed on the stoves, the led light strips are lit up to simulate fire – through the use of Arduino, FastLED.

Oven

For the digital version of the oven, we wanted to make something happen using the oven door as a trigger. Hence, we decided on using an infrared sensor to detect the distance of the door when closed to open. When the door opens, the distance increases and this triggers the LED strip within to shine a warm light – just like a real oven. When closed, the value falls and hence the light clears.

Television

With the television, compared to what we did for analog (puppets), the TV went into “no signal” and using Arduino servo motor, we decided to make it glitch a little everytime the button was pressed.

Projection Mapping

The projection mapping videos were illustrated by us and animated with After Effects. Using a projection mapping software called vpt8, we were able to map it onto specific areas that we wanted in the house rather than having to tilt and move the projector itself. Since we wanted it to be interactive, we decided to make the animation play only when someone has reacted to the object, through sensing motion. vpt8 is a MaxMSP-based software so we were able to use a MaxMSP patch with vpt8 that allowed us to connect a USB webcam to the laptop and map our areas from the webcam that we wanted to use to trigger the video so that when someone moves into that area, the software will play the animation.

vpt8

Final Outcomes, Video, Reflections

This project has been really fun to do and we are glad that we managed to do what we set out to do from the beginning, which was to create a life size dollhouse out of recyclable materials that would bring childlike fun and joy to participants.

One thing that was interesting was that we realised people seemed to have more fun playing with the analog aspects of the house (chalk, cooking) than with the digital aspects! I guess that’s the point of having an analog phase, to show us that analog works can bring joy and be successful too.

It has been a fulfilling semester working on Cardboard Kingdom for us, thanks again to everyone who came to see our work and to LP for all the guidance and help!

Cardboard Kingdom: Analog

Cardboard Kingdom

by Bridgel, Chloe, Mavis and Viena

About the artwork

Cardboard Kingdom is a recreation of the fascinations and perceptions one has about the world during childhood. When you’re small, everything around you just seems bigger, and a simple room could become a castle in your imagination. In this interactive installation, we have tapped into their memories from early childhood to recreate an innocence and simplicity that could only be possessed by a child.

Reminiscing on our childhood days where we were content with playing with the simplest of materials in the smallest of spaces, we have created a child’s playhouse simply using recycled materials incorporated with interactive digital elements. Cardboard Kingdom aims to gift participants something that is rare in today’s world: a little bit of pure childhood fun, reminding us that happiness can be found in the simplest of things.

Conceptualisation

The idea for this project came about when one day, we just happened to be talking about our childhoods and what we liked to play with. We discovered that for some reason, many people as kids tend to be fascinated by small spaces like cardboard boxes and personally for me, it has been my childhood fantasy to create a huge structure out of cardboard and just crawl in it!

SERIES D (SQUARE TUBES), REPRODUCTION. Charlotte Posenenske, 1967/2015. Cardboard.

We also came across the above artwork while on a field trip to the National Gallery’s Minimalism exhibit, which gave us the idea that this childhood fantasy of ours could actually be turned into an actual artwork. To keep with the theme of childhood, we decided to recreate a life-sized interactive dollhouse out of cardboard!

Analog Project Conceptualisation

The first phase of the project was to create the analog version. Since we already knew that we would be using cardboard to create the objects for both the analog and digital versions, we decided to just create the things that we wanted to have for the final product and just add on the digital aspects after completing the analog ones.

We discussed and came up with a list of household furniture and appliances that we felt could be more interactive, both analog and digitally, as well as which rooms we wanted to have:

Kitchen

  • Stove
  • Sink
  • Oven
  • Washing Machine

Living Room

  • Fish tank
  • Television
  • Potted plant

Toilet

  • Toilet bowl
  • Bathtub

We created a mock-up sketch to plan out the functions of each component:

Analog Project Process

To start off, we created this miniature model of our project in order to picture how the final product looks and test the properties of our chosen material (cardboard)

Scent components

To make the analog project more immersive, we decided that in all the “rooms” we would have a scent component to it on top of having the cardboard structures.

Chloe hard at work (:

Using flour, food colouring and food colouring, we created a scented paste which we were able to harden to create certain objects in the house or coat over the cardboard structures to give off certain scents.

Kitchen

The main attraction of our “kitchen” is the kitchen sink, oven and washing machine! All the knobs and doors can be turned and toggled, and the oven contains a scented “pandan cake” which we made with our scented paste. The washing machine has a rotatable drum which the audience can open the door of to take things in and out, like a real washing machine.

Plastic toy foods

Vinegar mixed with food colouring for “cooking”

Scented “cupcakes” and toy eggs

We also purchased some plastic cooking toys because what’s a dollhouse without cooking toys? We wanted participants to play with our structures like they were children playing in a big doll house, so we also had some toy pots and pans and some baking soda so that they could mix it with the coloured vinegar to create chemical reactions and pretend that they were cooking!

The entire kitchen family!

Bathroom

Toilet bowl made using a wooden stool as a base that participants could sit on. We later added a flippable lid to the toilet bowl and created fake “poop” scented with plant fertiliser which was placed under the lid on the stool!

We attempted to make a round bathtub by bending and shaping different pieces of cardboard and taping them together, however it turned out to be really flimsy so we switched to a rectangular structure instead and added a turnable knob!

The tub was filled with foam packing peanuts so that participants could jump inside for tactile sensory play!

Living Room

We created a cardboard television with a hollow base, as well as some sock puppets, so that participants could put on their own puppet shows and watch them through the TV! We wanted to encourage them to be participative in our installation and to use the creativity and imagination that everyone has as a young child.

Coating the “leaves” with pandan scented paste

Puppet show for LP

There is also a fish tank which can be seen on the right side of the above photo, which has colour-coded fishes and sliders that participants can move around to make it appear like the fish are “swimming” in the tank.

Outcomes and Reflections

The analog project was really fun to do! Before doing this project we really didn’t realise how much we as interactive media artists rely purely on digital components to create interactivity in our works. The analog project really forces us to think about what really makes a work interactive. It’s not just about throwing on as many lights and cameras and sensors as we can, it’s about thinking how participants/audience will react to the pieces and the kind of reaction it evokes in them that’s more important.

Apart from that, looking back the analog project was really helpful to our digital project because it creates a basis from which we can build our digital components around. By reusing the same components from our analog project in our digital project, we were able to use the digital aspect as an enhancement to our analog pieces which were already interactive. The analog and digital components complement one another rather than relying too much on just one aspect, which is something that we as artists and creators should keep in mind especially in this day and age where we tend to be so focused on new technologies that we forget that physical forms and objects have an important role to play as well.

Project 3 Process & Final

As per the previous post, these were the first few illustrations I did for my project which I showed to Lisa during consult! While she liked the animals and human figures, she suggested that I change the perspective of the pagoda and arch to make it more 2D since I am going for a flatter illustration style. Hence I redrew those!

Here is the first version of my poster which I did which I showed to Lisa for consult! It contains all my illustrated elements and as you can see I changed the perspective of the pagoda and arch and made it flatter. For the poster, Lisa recommended some small changes. She suggested that I change the colour of the pangolin to a darker brown to make it contrast more against the green background, and to have grass at the base of all the trees. She also suggested that I change the colour of the cat to match Bobby, one of the NTU cats which recently passed away, as a way to immortalise him (ok the cat I drew was previously orange but I reverse engineered to get this old version of the poster so I don’t have it now HAHA sorry)

I also did a bottle wrap which I also showed during the consult. Lisa had the same comments about the grass at the base of the tree and the colour of the pangolin, and she also suggested that I move the snake elsewhere as it was a little sparse at that area of the composition. She also asked me to include the man on the bicycle because she liked that illustration HAHA

I had also ordered this had to be made as one of my collaterals and I showed it to Lisa!

So following the consult, here were my final artworks!

Final Product Shots

Project 3 Research & Ideation

For this project we were tasked to illustrate collaterals for an event of our choice. I had the idea to do the branding for NTU’s Yunnan Garden because I was doing a video for the Chinese Heritage Centre for another module, for the opening event of the Yunnan Garden. So I thought it would be good if I could do the branding for the same event!

Concept PDF:

To decide on what I wanted to specifically illustrate, I decided to take a look into the history of Nanyang University and the Yunnan Garden. I took a visit to the Chinese Heritage Centre to get some ideas, and I found a picture book which gave a lot of insight into what Nanyang University was like in the past! Here are some interesting pages from the book:

I decided to include some of the historical elements I found in the book into the illustrations, such as the durian & rambutan trees, and the pagoda and arch. I also decided to include some of the wildlife found around NTU in the illustration. Knowing this, I went ahead with illustrating the individual elements!