s q u i d s o u p . o r g

The Stealth Project, a 3 dimensional take on the classic game Connect 4 and inspired by the Cold War Modern exhibition, was premiered on 31 October at the Gamble Room, V&A, London. The project is a Squidsoup collaboration with Horao GmbH / ETHZ and uses the NOVA 3D LED grid.

Flickr slideshow here.

Our latest project, a collaboration with ETH Zurich and horao GmbH and featuring their wonderful NOVA 3D LED grid, will be premiered at the French Connection Friday Late at the V&A museum in London on 31 October 2008.

Planes, missiles and other hardware that deflect or otherwise avoid radar detection were key in the race for world supremacy. Detection avoidance, or stealth technology, was one of many ‘developments’ to emerge from the Cold War.

In the Stealth project, two grids of triggers target and launch missiles across an abstracted 3D space at each other, attempting to avoid radar detection and annihilate the opposition.

However, in contrast to the Mutually Assured Destruction madness of the arms race, the piece acts as a collaborative spatial musical instrument – each ‘missile’ emits sounds based on its relative position and the conditions it encounters along its trajectory.

The Stealth Project developed from research into the creative possibilities of volumetric, or 3D, visualisation techniques. Recent Squidsoup experiments using a Baby NOVA (the physical centrepiece of this project) suggested that this kind of three-dimensional light grid has considerable potential for abstract gaming applications.

Full press release here: stealth-text-final

NOVA links: 1 2 3

The piece also uses 2x Monome 64 devices as control interfaces. These are handmade, beautiful and sustainably built.

Three days in Zurich experimenting with NOVA, a 3D LED grid system developed by ETHZ (Swiss Institute of Technology). Very interesting to see what works and what doesn’t. These images do not do the system justice: beside being 2D representations of a 3D visual, they don’t fully convey the shimmering beauty of NOVA, especially in the dark.

The ‘Baby NOVA’ is a 10x10x10 grid; this one was at Technopark, Zurich. The large one is a 50x50x10 grid, and is publicly viewable at Zurich Central Station.

Preliminary video rushes:

More images and slideshow available here.

NOVA websites: www.nova.ethz.ch and www.horao.biz

We tried out a range of effects and ideas; mainly randomness, dynamic 3D geometry, and a combination of 2D and 3D imagery; using the 3D grid to represent 2D imagery (mainly from a webcam in these experiments), but using all of the voxels/LEDs,and focusing on a single ‘sweet-spot’. The image is surprisingly clear from one viewpoint, but abstracted from any other position.

The large NOVA at the Central Station is relatively flat, and too high up for best results, but sweet-spot visuals and 3D geometries do still work, and have an extraordinary not-quite-there effect, as though they inhabit physical space yet are not there…

… exploring the magnificent light properties of Aerogel (see earlier post here). This is a weird and wonderful substance. Projecting through it is akin to projecting in a smoke-filled environment, but it’s a solid space. These images don’t do the physical reality justice. More soon.

This is a single module of the NOVA system, as seen at the Wired NextFest

One way to control light in 3 dimensions is to put loads of lights in a space and control each light. I’ve always loved this idea ever since seeing the work of Jim Campbell. Although not 3D, his use of low resolution 2D grids of lights is highly evocative and beautiful.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=vONC5FJ3XYg&feature=related]

Taking it into 3D causes headaches mainly because of the numbers of lights/LEDs involved. A 32×24 2D grid needs 768 lights; a 32x24x24 3D grid needs 18,432. Search 3D grid in Youtube and you get anything from 3x3x3 up to, currently, 16 cubed.

A nice example of a larger cube – apparently modular – is by James Clar

Seekway also make a 16x16x16 grid – see here.

NOVA, developed by the Swiss Institute of Technology, is an interesting one. A grid of LED clusters, 10cm apart and in 3cm spheres, in 10x10x10 modules.

There’s a 50x50x10 module at Zurich Central station.

NOVA site here

Image courtesy of this site

UVA have played with a more abstract notion of this idea with ‘Volume’:

as have Jason Bruges Studios with ‘Untitled Chandelier’:

and finally, also very nice is the work of Erwin Redl – this is his project Matrix II

Aerogel apparently holds 5 record properties, including the best insulator and lightest solid on the planet. It is used by NASA to collect space dust, and this in turn was an inspiration for Liliane Lijn to produce a piece of work using Aerogel at Riflemakers in Soho (London) – see here.

We have a piece of Aerogel, kindly provided by Airglass AB, and it is extraordinary stuff, and visually absolutely beautiful. Half way between glass and nothing, like a chimera or ghost.

It does weird things with light; it looks yellow outdoors and blue indoors; light reflects/refracts off it in interesting ways.