Author: axol

axol-LookingOutwards01

Mirages & miracles is an augmented reality exhibition created by Adrien M & Claire B, and was first displayed in 2017. It is meant as “a tribute to us humans as we cling to seemingly lifeless, motionless, inorganic things”.

Mirages & miracles – trailer

What fascinated me the most the first time I saw the project was how the AR technology was seamlessly integrated with the physical display. AR technology had used in many occasion, but too often do they feel detached from the physical world, and often somewhat unnecessary. This was the one project I saw and remembered where the technology was one with the art, and as we mentioned in the first class, it brings an emotional impact instead of merely leaving me to wonder how they did it. There were also VR and projection parts of the display, but it was the AR part that was most memorable to me.

To my knowledge the this project is done with a team of around 30 people (throughout the whole process, from concept to final set up). And I cannot find information on what it was created with.

axol-Map

Distant Planet

Looking through your amateur telescope, you can’t see much. The hills and valleys seem to stretch on endlessly. Nevertheless, you diligently mapped everything down, and looked harder for signs of life. 

Map more wasteland!

Process:

1.) basic isosurfaces from “islands” 2.) set thresholds so it looks more like topography maps 3.) dynamic coloring base on height 4.) further tweaking of variables

I wanted to create a topographic map, and I happened to stumble on this tutorial which I thought could be used achieve the effect I want. The “islands” are generated at random locations on the map, with a random size and height(shown in yellow circles in  1-2). The color of each pixel is then evaluated base on their distance to all islands and the height of that island, and I specified thresholds so it appears more like “levels” of land . At last, there’s some randomly generated coordinates and map legend drawn.

Although my original intention is to create like an “island on ocean” kind of map, I really liked the black and white color scheme and stuck with it. It reminded me of pictures of the moon’s surface.

More Pictures:

 

Axol-01-Reading-OatmealProblem

Kate Compton’s idea of the “10,000 Bowls of Oatmeal” problem describes the difference between mathematical uniqueness and perceptual uniqueness, and in my opinion, how our human perception of aesthetics and uniqueness is completely subjective.

Humans identifies objects by their key characteristics, for example, a bird by a feathered egg-laying animal that walks on two legs; and we differentiate different types of birds by what we consider to be their significant characteristics: their color, their size, their beak shape, etc. We do not identify them via their smell, or that one of them have an extra feather on its tail(though that maybe significant to birds) — these details are not what we look for when we perceive a bird. Hence, only changes on the significant characteristics ends up influencing our perception, and contributing to the perceptual uniqueness.

Thus as the article’s proposed creative process for procedural art suggests, it’s important to identify these key characteristics of whatever you’re trying to generate, and know your audience’s expectations. The article also touches on how associations and context could  contribute to the authentic-ness of the object, and that reminds me of the Bouba/kiki effect, where our associations of shapes/sounds/color/etc is constantly affecting our perception of the world– and we should use them to our advantage when creating work.