I am using ofxBlur to render the image only when there is movement in the camera.
First I took a video in the street using ofxBlur:
Then I run the blur video through the three.js video tool using Edge Detection and Blur effect:
Then I ran that video again through my tool using the mesh distortion and the edge detection:
Hyperlapse.js library with three.js --> mapping the video to a 3D plane geometry with 3D particles being able to fly through the plane. This is generative so you can go anywhere in the world: New York, Venice, Australia, Tokyo.
“There is a vast negative space around us, and we think it’s empty, the same way we imagined life before germ theory. It’s not empty. It’s more alive than anything we build. This is a project in shifting what Foucault called “the liminal horizon” so that you understand the whole world differently when you look away from what we’ve shown you.”
FINAL PIECE CONCEPT & FORM:
My final piece for the thesis show and main representation of my research will be a web-based visualization tool that is meant to be an evocative art piece. I am intending for this piece to capture the imagination of the audience.
I am building a web-based experience that is a cross between a film, video-game, and data visualization, enabling the user to imagine the microbial nature of the city.
I am asking the user to reimagine what it means to be human in the vast metropolis that is New York City. Who are the “companion species” that live among us? How might the world appear from a microbes point of view?
The web site will be built out to include information about the data collection, analysis and preliminary findings based on the data-set from New York City.
CURRENT PROTOTYPE (MAR 2016):
I am using three.js to build a custom web-tool. The user will be able to select a path or journey through the city (say 5th Ave and 10th St, to 5th Ave and Washington Square Park). Then using hyperlapse.js and Google Street Images, a video of the path will be made. The video is then mapped to a 3D mesh in 3D space. Various custom filters (which are part of my visualization tool-kit) can be applied to the video to make the city appear as if the microbial world is coming to life. Finally 3D particle systems are applied to the 3D video that further seek to illustrate the microbial nature of New York City.
Adding particles into the scene in three.js.
Using thermal cameras to show the human body - applying particles to a scene that is mapped by thermal radiation:
Some kind of "invisible" ink only visible when shown under UV light:
Thermochromatic paper:
Mapping shapes to microbes -- a "design taxonomy" for the microbes:
There is something aesthetically that I love about Sol Lewitt and his contemporaries. Something about the micro and the macro that has always been very appealing to me.
Sol Lewitt Wall Drawing 1180
I visited the Cooper Union lab to look at some microbes:
We will begin to question the limitations of what it means to be human. What technological shifts might facilitate a new kind of human.
References:
Control of resources and what happens when humans have control of those resources. Lessons of Darkness shows the force that all the oil has - the oil has the capability of mobilizing military forces for example, it has potential energy in the world. Syriana shows the back-room legal deals, spies, etc. These kind of situations are left out of 2312. What does it mean for humans to be strained by resource availability?
In 2312 we understand that a political territory has been established in space. There are resource wars around water and ice which is brought back to venus to supply water. A 200 year project to bring resources. This is the politics of materiality that Lessons of Darkness and Syriana bring us.
The geo-politics of oil: where did oil come from? Is it a residue of a previous era of life? Is it not just an intermediary between us and the sun? Energy that can be transformed from one thing into another.
Case study: The state of Florida and the rising sea tides.
The micro-cultures that are connected to a network and putting pressure on the network, and visa-versa.
2312:
"Servile Will" - the people stuck on Earth vs. the people who have gotten off Earth
"Pseudo Iterative"
"The Long Walk" - "vision quest" - "sun walker"
The Sun - the sun is alive.
"Structures of Affect"
"Materiality of Time"
I borrowed a small microscope to begin looking into the microbial world:
Experiments with a micropscope
PERFORMANCE
GOOGLE EARTH & MICROSCOPIC
MICROSCOPIC TEXTURES
GOOGLE STREET VIEW
KALAIDESCOPE
References:
Themes:
Our systems limit us. What can go beyond these systems?
Universalist commons - love. http://www.generation-online.org/t/almavenus.htm
“Kairos (καιρός) is an ancient Greek word meaning the right or opportune moment (the supreme moment). The ancient Greeks had two words for time, chronos and kairos. While the former refers to chronological or sequential time, the latter signifies a time lapse, a moment of indeterminate time in which everything happens.
”
lateral incursions from the technoscape and the mediascape can shape the bioscape...
References:
Terms:
"Animals and plants are no longer heralded as autonomous entities but rather as biomolecular networks composed of the host plus its associated microbes, i.e., "holobionts." As such, their collective genomes forge a "hologenome," and models of animal and plant biology that do not account for these intergenomic associations are incomplete." (Source)
To what degree do we hope that "the human" makes it into the future?
Recursive structure: what does it mean for humans to be the only organism that we are aware of that are self aware?
Climate Change - we cannot stop global warming. So how do we position the human in relation to that? Intense planetary scale change will lead to many deaths.
Are we the only self aware and intelligent species in the universe?
How will media work in the future?
The "scape": mediascape, ideoscapes, technoscapes, ethnoscapes....
What kind of human is produced?
extra-planetary: rule sets that govern life, AI, programming languages....
"theatocracy"
These are some projects that had been technical inspirations:
Ideas: How can I make this about the people in the neighborhoods? Interviews?
We are surrounded by an invisible world made up of microbes. This world, called the microbiome, influences our lives in ways that scientists are only just beginning to understand, but what is clear is that only 10% of the cells in your body are human. The other 90% are made up of microbes. Every time you touch something, you are interacting with this microbial world, interchanging microbes that influence your health and the very makeup of your body.
Bio City is a conceptual art piece that asks the question: do you know what lies beneath the surface of your world? The project attempts to prompt the viewers to rethink the way we design our world. Can we redesign the built environment with the microbial world in mind? If humans understood this microbial interaction, how would that change our behavior?
Bio City is constructed using modular wall panels, thus each time the piece is hung it takes one a new form, which is illustrative of the fact that each environment has an entirely different microbial world living beneath it. The terrain-like structure on the faces of the panels show the viewer that there is a world beneath the surface. Like mountains that protrude from the walls, the panels reveal that there is more to the built environment than meets the eye.
Bio City invites viewers to reimagine their built environments and to think about the hidden world that lie inside of and around every surface they touch. What lies beneath?
Site Location:
My key conceptual precedent for my project is Patho Map – a research endeavor from Cornell Medical College that took metagenomic samples from NYC subway stations to determine the microbial quality of each stop. The project sought to understand and qualify the metagenome of the built environment of NYC. Thus, I choose my installation site to be the NYC Subway stop at Union Square. I think this location adds to the concept of my project. It further challenges the viewer to ask: what is the specific metagenomic quality of this subway stop?
Process:
(1) 3D Modeling
Use Rhino to 3D model a surface. Note that all the sides have draft angles to make it easier to remove the plastic molds
(2) Printing mold
I then wanted to CNC the piece in wood, but I was told one of the issues with vacuum forming is that the mold can get stuck inside the plastic. So I realized that the Object 3D printer uses wax to cast and that the final pieces are very smooth. I thought this would be a great use of materials for vacuume forming.
(3) Wood Base
I cut a wood base to use in the vacuum former. This is necessary because when you vacuum form, everything will get sucked up from the bed. If you have a base, you can then cut around your piece so that it looks cleaner and more professional.
(4) Vacuum Forming:
It takes a few test runs on the vacuum former before you get a hang of how to do it. I ended up wasting a bit of material on these tests. So next time I would buy extra material to be sure there is enough. I also ended up using a timer to make sure that each piece came out the same. 40 seconds seemed to be the right amount of time. Also, because of the way the vacuum former works, you have to have a seal on the perimeter of your plastic with the rectangle of the machine. This means you end up wasting a lot of material, so this is something to keep in mind for next time.
I used an knife to cut out my pieces from the large sheets of plastic.
(5) Site testing
I took the pieces to two different sites to test how they could be arranged. Because they are modular, each time you can arrange them in a different way.
(6) Final
I took the pieces into the subway and hung them on the wall. I observed people watching and passing by.
Precedents:
(1)
PathoMap: http://www.pathomap.org/
PathoMap is a research project by Weill Cornell Medical College to study the microbiome and metagenome of the built environment of NYC.
(2)
http://stadium.dallascowboys.com/art/art_commissions.cfm?commision=isermann
