Author: thumbpin

thumbpin-ARSculpture

This is a project that Emily and I made in collaboration. Our project is an AR penguin that follows you around.

In our project, the penguin is a source of comfort for the user in environments like elementary school where the user may be away from their family for the first time and need extra support. Since the penguin is the user’s imaginary friend, the user is also the site which the penguin follows. To create our project, we generated a random circular path for the penguin to travel in the proximity of the user that updates so that it stays in the proximity of the user when they move from place to place. The penguin follows the user with different animations based on how fast the user is traveling. In the future, we would like to expand on the penguin character by having it respond to time of day and weather.

thumbpin-ARSketch

  1. A house in the woods. Maybe shared between 2 ppl and users can move things around or change things in the interior
  2. Journals placed in specific places around the city with generated text – a record of my childhood/life

thumbpin-Assemblage

When I first attempted this exercise, I combined a few models that I liked that had very different textures (hand-painted, photoshop gradients, made with photogrammetry). I didn’t like the way that looked, so I looked for new models that had more similar textures to combine. My favorite model here is the Lotus Shoe (center) because of it’s unexpected shape (I didn’t know it was a shoe at first, I saw a nice cloth blob). I really enjoy models with drapery or cloth. I liked combining the models in Unity and playing with more plausible vs. less plausible setups, and I ended up keeping it simple with 3 models in a vertically oriented sculpture.

thumbpin-LookingOutwards05

The pieces depicted in this video are actually 2D photographs and works by the artist Sarah Meyohas. The photographs are taken from the artist’s Speculations series and depict infinite reflections composed of mirrors and an array of props such as flowers, rope, and the artist’s body.

I thought it was interesting that this piece was in the VR playlist since it doesn’t involve any VR. The appearance of the 2D images does suggest a 3D environment that can be explored by walking through and zooming in. When I imagine these photographs as 3D environments, they have a quiet, thoughtful, surreal quality that I like.

https://wassermanprojects.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Fall2018_Release_FINAL.pdf

thumbpin-TeachableMachine

I wanted to try using Teachable Machine to detect different letters of the ASL alphabet. I realized that I needed to add more input images with my hand in different places (e.g. in the top left/right corners, in front of my face, closer to the camera) for better output.

thumbpin-ArtBreeder

3 images made with the general model:

1 image made with the album cover model:

I was surprised by how much I liked some of the generated images. I thought some of them were really exciting, which was unexpected.