Glowing Pathfinder Bugs, a playful piece commissioned by Folly, has been shown at several Portable Pixel Playground events in 2008 and 2009.
The bugs analyse the shape (topography) of the sand around them, preferring to move gently downhill. This means they can be shepherded, enclosed within walls of sand, encouraged to meet each other (at which point strange metamorphoses happen; they merge into larger caterpillars then, if you’re lucky, into butterflies. If they get frightened, they pop and disappear.
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.
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.
The Portable Pixel Playground commission for Folly is underway. The project aims to combine physical play (moulding the sand in a sandpit) with virtual animal husbandry, and is aimed at 6-12 year old kids.
For us it’s a great opportunity to make something solid, simple, fun, immediate and aimed directly at kids – something we haven’t done directly since the Virtual Puppeteers project… although it has to be said that children have explored and had fun with several of our other projects.
Virtual caterpillars, projected onto the sandpit, react to the physical topography of the sand, and can be enclosed by sand walls, scared by children’s hands and fingers, and attracted to each other. When they meet, magical things begin to happen…
Technically, the project uses a Point Grey Bumblebee stereo camera to capture depthmap information from the sandpit in real time – using software and ideas first developed for Driftnet during a Research Fellowship at Arts Institute Bournemouth in 2007. See here for another experiment with the Bumblebee.
Camera view of sandpit, and depthmap (red near, blue far)
Bumblebee on tripod
Trial setup
Physically, the piece is going to need to be strong – not only to survive the elements outdoors in a playground, but also to survive the children! Currently the ideas revolve around a large 3 or 4-legged dome-shaped structure (steel and tent material) that will shield the equipment and the sandpit itself from the elements, and also some light.
Trial using the accelerometer in a Monome 64 to create a new interface for the old mobile phone game Snake. Works out to be very tactile, intuitive, responsive and quite fun. First posted March 2008.
Snake is a bit of an old favourite – we did this 3D version a few years back…
