LookingOutwords-06

Artist: Memo Akten

Title: My secret heart

Year: 2008

Excerpts from My Secret Heart

My Secret Heart is a blend of restricted randomness that organically animates a set of flowing ribbons. It was a part of a music and film performance by Streetwise Opera – a charity that uses music to help homeless people. It is an impressive rendering that resembles flocking behaviour but also evokes a wandering spirit drawn by random attractions.

Memo Akten explains that the ribbons have random attractors at random intervals. Stronger attractors result in flocking. In this case, the mouse was used as a ‘very strong attractor’. Perlin noise was also used in the movement of the ribbon head to its target and in the sway of the other parts of the ribbon. I imagine that it was used to keep the movements from being erratic.

The resulting animation is random but organic akin to a sea creature with tentacles. The movement is random but fluid. It blends seemlessly into the Streetwise Opera performer.

My Secret Heart demo – testing flocking