FYP Proposal: WOA (working title)

Refining the details and more thoughts

Project Outline
The project will focus on fostering an experience within a space, instead of the interaction at this point of time. Ultimately, I would still want to include some degree of interaction but will focus on creating the experience first.

With regards to the artistic direction, it will remain minimalist, stripped down to the ‘element’. The project’s light projection will now project planes of light parallel to a human body.

Conceptualised version of light projection (rough sketch)

Above: a small snippet of the visualised light projection; the light rays will form walls which are solid, yet the walls ‘curve’ around the viewers like a maze. Repetition of the light waves will be conducted throughout the entire space, to create a visual depth.

The light projections will now include coloured lights, to further push across a visual depth. (Under consideration: allow viewers to toggle with colour filters and change the colours).

After more research, the project will reference the following artists to better reflect its ideal:

 

James Turrell, Breathing Light (2013)

Turrell’s Breathing Light effectively creates an atmospheric space with an even lighting to promote a surreal, out of the world experience. Similarly, the intention for the project is to achieve a similar atmospheric condition, of creating an entirely different, immersive, contained experience.

Despite similarities in medium, my project would instead integrate additional dimensions, whereby the possibilities for variation of lighting schemes are maintained. Despite that, it would be good to examine the visitor’s reactions and use it as basis to predict how the audience would react for my project.

 

Parallels by NONOTAK (2015) and White Canvas by Cocolab (2016)

White Canvas by Cocolab

Both Parallels and White Canvas present more suitably the idea and outcome the project wishes to achieve, albeit with differences. The idea of repetitive forms hailed from White Canvas, but I wish to further simplify the light forms hence the usage of planes. At the same time, I feel that the usage of projected light planes can further increase the ‘wholeness’ and the large scale of the project.

Technicalities
As per the previous update, I would like to harness projectors onto the roof tentage of the truss room, and the projection will hail downwards.

The smoke machine still remains, as it contributes to better visuals of the light rays.

Concept
I am still exploring related concepts but have shortlisted several ideas that might relate to the project: the black hole (in space), stormy weather, haze.

Ongoing Concerns
– Would have to test out the lighting to determine the outcome of the lights
– Of not having visitors stay beyond a short period to experience the project (trying to further interactivity in the later half)
– Would prefer to integrate more analog elements within the artwork, instead of pure projections

LED Adafruit Strips (Mini Project) – Temperature sensor

I made a little device that helps to tell you what temperature your cup of cuppa is from the colour of the led light strip. Basically, warmer -> reddish undertone, colder (and nearer to room temperature) -> blueish undertone.

However, the temperature sensor took quite some time to sense the change in temperature, hence it might be better to use it to test when your hot water has sufficiently cooled, rather than how hot it is. As waiting for the hot water to cool down has a somewhat similar (ie. longer) timeframe available for the temperature sensor to sense the actual temperature.

 

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Up: Final Prototype

How it was made:

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The temperature sensor poked through a tiny hole in the cardboard. Place the cup above this hole.

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An example of different colours the LEDs were capable of. Blue (cold), Red (warm)

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An Arduino Uno, and Adafruit library was used to make the code.

Lights, action! / Gyroscope, lights and sound

This prototype is a further development of the previous ‘swish the sound’, with the addition of chauvet lights.

When the gyroscope is tilted at an angle, there are two responses:

1. Sound is played at the angle the gyroscope is tilted at, and

2. Red light intensifies at the corner the gyroscope is tilted at, washing out the green

Sound is created by using ambisonic, while the control of the light was made by scaling the x and y coordinates of the gyroscope.

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Scaling of the gyroscope was slightly different (ie. improved) from the previous sound/graphics/gyroscope patch. Now, the greater the tilting of the angle, the greater the intensity of the red lights. However, several improvements could be made:

  • alike to ambisonics, which had a smoother transition when the gyroscope tilt changes, transition between the different chauvet lights could be smoothed out.
  • perhaps the intensity of the ‘chosen’ chauvet light could also be dimmed – this I tried, but could not successfully manipulate the lighting such that it stopped blinking (ie. setting the minimum threshold)