Scapes is on show at TENDERPIXEL GALLERY, 10 CECIL COURT, LEICESTER SQUARE, LONDON until 5 MARCH 2011 – please do go and see it. Details and opening times HERE
Scapes is a dynamic and responsive light sculpture in five movements by digital arts group Squidsoup. Each movement is a different take on the combination of realtime sound analysis with volumetric visualisations – creating visuals that occupy physical 3D space purely out of sound. Slow moving dynamic light sculptures evolve from Alexander Rishaug‘s mesmerising ambient soundscapes to evoke an abstract world where time has no meaning.
We have just emerged from six days in a black box at the Kinetica Art Fair, nurturing Surface, the first project on the Ocean of Light 3D LED grid. It was an intense period, with apparently some 10,000 people passing through in three days.
Surface is a responsive virtual eco-system that occupies physical space. It uses a room-sized 3D grid of individually addressable points of light to simulate movement in physical space. The space is dominated by a surface – the boundary between two fluid virtual materials. The materials are affected by sound – nearby noises create waves that ripple across the surface. The surface is, however, unstable: the turbulence caused by noise also triggers luminous blasts. Abstract insect-like autonomous agents, aware of their surroundings, also navigate and negotiate the environment and the surface. The result is a series of interconnected spaces and environments, overlapping physical and virtual spaces that coexist and are aware of each other.
For us, it was also an intense learning experience. The first outing for the Ocean of Light, a hardware project supported by the Technology Strategy Board, was a litmus test for whether this kind of 3D visuals work on the uninitiated – whether people “get it”. It seems that they do – responses were very positive. We’ve also had a lot of ideas – our own and suggested by others – about future directions and options.
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.
