GENERATIVE ART
Emmanuel BARINIA DES09124 – Prototyping Interactive Experiences
BRIEF & SITE ANALYSIS The brief was to design a projected generative art installation through processing in a given location within the campus. The given site location of the project is situated in a corridor of Napier Merchiston campus (here represented in the plan on the right) often referred to as “the glass box�. The corridor is especially busy during rush hours because of the students (mostly creative and design students)going in and out of their classes. And of course because it is busy it means it is noisy as well.
BRIEF & SITE ANALYSIS As previously stated, the chosen space is a corridor in a University, a space where students generally use for moving from a room to another, or going to other parts of the campus. It is meant to be temporary, a transitional space, hence the reason it is generally poorly designed and lit. Because it give access to different rooms and spaces within the campus, it is used by significant amount of people throughout the day (especially in the morning).
Because of that, I used to think that corridors are relatively boring, too crowded and noisy. But what if we used those negative terms and turn them into positive ones? So that the crowd could interact with the space, through the noise people make? Now that would be interesting‌
INITIAL INVESTIGATION Before getting into the development of ideas, I did a quick investigation around the campus trying to find what type of interaction was already installed. Most of them involved touching (buttons)
While others use sensors (proximity, cards, energy, barcodes) to work.
So what kind of spatial interaction are we missing in the campus?
SITE INVESTIGATION
These rough sketch above represent the traffic flow in the design corridor during the morning rush hour while student try to get to their classes. The first sketch represent traffic at 9.45, the second at 10. The last sketch represent traffic direction during morning rush hour. My chosen targeted projection area was the white wall in front of the glass box. The downside is that it isn’t fully covered in white and there is a name tag on the end of the wall. As for the projection it is either from the top or facing upward with a mirror.
CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT So my idea was to make use of the noise generated by student while passing through the corridor in order to enhance the experience while adding a little touch of interactivity. Of course this kind of interactivity between sound and art already exist, such as oscilloscopes, spectrum and other form of equalizers. After all, this can be considered as generative art as well.
CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT The first concept was a code that uses the the microphone to move a line depending of the intensity of the sound perceived, just like an oscilloscope for a music player. I started experimenting on the code, producing multiple lines and effect but then I figured I couldn’t do much as it was too simple.
The second Idea was another code that was used to measure the frequencies and the intensity of sound produce through the microphone. I found this one more suited for the needs of the project so I started experimenting with it.
CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT After some tweaking on the code I removed the scales on the sides, changed the colours of the lines and background to fit the University’s colour and added the Napier logo.
FINAL RESULT
ON-SITE PROJECTION
ON-SITE PROJECTION