• ZOOM FROM TOP ON LAND MASS [SETTING – LAND MASS (blob)]
• LONG SHOT ON ARROW AND ORGANISMS PASSING BY
  • A giant arrow (pointing up), placed in the middle of the land mass, is bumped by a citizen (blob/organism painted red). The citizen places the arrow to the right. Another citizen (blob/organism painted blue) passing by sees this change and moves it towards the left. The two organisms fight over the position of the arrow – tensions rise and they begin to attract more attention/chaos.

• WALLS BUILT BETWEEN SECTIONS OF THE LAND MASS [PAN OVER LAND MASS]
  • During the chaos, the organisms begin to build walls, separating 7 sections of the land mass – 3 sections on left of land, 3 sections on right of land, 1 section surrounding arrow.
  • (USE SERVOS TO MOVE WALLS:STOP MOTION?)

• ONE SIDE GAINS POWER AND CONTROL OVER THE ARROW [EXTREME LONG SHOT]
  • From the right side, a section begins to gain power and eventually controls the center point of the land mass (center section glows red). Celebration among the right side.

• THE LAND MASS BEGINS TO CATCH ON FIRE [PAN/ZOOM OUT FROM CENTER]The center section begins to rise and the arrow is destroyed (center section glows orange). Sense of anxiety among the surrounding sections as the center rises. Fire begins to spread from the center – more chaos among the organisms. (Will possibly use forced perspective to show the fire in front of land mass)

• ABRUPT CUT TO BLACK, FADE UP ON THE ASHES OF THE CITY
  • Focus on a patch of ash – “hope springs from the ashes”. A purple (?) organism rises from the rubble.

Our teams wishes to explore the orbital motion of celestial bodies, gravity, and the effect of warping light around large bodies of mass. We also intend to explore the varied surfaces of exotic planets with colorful mountains, oceans and crevasses galore against the infinite allure of mystical nebulae with gigantic glowing balls of thermonuclear explosions that form the brilliant stars.

Here is a series of concept sketches depicting our final vision for the project:

Our project is built  on top of our previous framework utilizing a single spinning stepper motor impaled onto a black ball of paper and metallic foil. We will improve and expand upon this experiment with more planets, more lights, more colors and more effects. In all, this shall result in a “weird abstract” planetarium of celestial bodies orbiting one or multiple stars.

In order to execute our vision, we intend to construct 10 planets out of expanded polystyrene spheres, covered with different materials such as foil, paper, paint and more to simulate various planet surface textures. During our final shoot, we intend to create atmospheric space effects with the clever application of Humidifiers and Mist Spray Bottles.

We will construct a kinematic armature with 1 main stepper motor to spin the entire superstructure, with 2 smaller rotary appendages powered by continuous rotation servomotors on the ends of the main armature to represent orbiting moons. To complement to our armature, we will create custom Arduino electronics to run the stepper motor and servo motors simultaneously.

The final film will be composed of 5 cuts, with 2 planets per cut. When compiled together, everything will look like one pan for one scene. The picture begins in complete blackness, and gradually shows planets swirling around a brilliant star, whose great bright white light eventually engulfs the entire screen in a ethereal flash of white light.

Background: Vaporwave

Vaporwave is a musical subgenre that originated in the early 2010’s and spread throughout youth culture over the next half decade. It is characterized by the remixing of nostalgia and consumer culture into something that’s artistically surreal. Vaporwave aesthetics, or “ＡＥＳＴＨＥＴＩＣＳ” usually incorporates artifacts of obsolete computer imagery, including glitch art, VHS tapes, crude digital renderings, and cyberpunk.

What We’re Doing

Vaporwave visual culture is entrenched in digital space only. What we aim to do is to bring a visual that is usually rendered digitally into physical space, creating something digital looking through analog means. Namely we want to create a series of wireframe images and composition them together into a “room” with a vector graphics kind of appearance to it. Some of the wireframes will be simple geometric objects, like a cube or a cone, while a center piece will be a wireframe of Plato’s head. These objects will be rotated like a 3D model. What we did here was the “room” part of the experiment, where we put the viewer in a pseudo vector art like space.

How We’re Doing It

We are currently experimenting with how we want to create the “analog wireframes”. One method we try experimenting with in the video is the use of fishing wires, overexposure, and clever lighting. Our second technique that we want to experiment with involves painting a statue black then using glow paint to give it a wireframe. The rotation will then be used with a stepper motor.

Storyboards

Additional Images

Created By:

Maddie Duque

Andrew Chang

Sydney Ayers

Nitesh Sridhar

Drawing inspiration from the ‘butterfly effect’ of Rube Goldberg machines, we intend to create individual set-ups whose movements serve as metaphorical or physical catalysts for the next series of machines, creating a visually cohesive sequence.

Current ideas that may be implemented in the final film:

• Manipulation of spiderwebs based on designs similar to that of cat’s cradle
• Blossoming of a flower based on movement of origami folds
• Natural geometric occurrences (honeycombs, fibonacci spirals, fractals patterns in rivers/tree branches, etc)

Group Project Members:

Jen Kwang

Sam Stark

Melody Ting

Ricardo Tucker

1. Open on the spinning color wheel (similar to the opening of Allures)
2. Zoom into center until it’s totally black
3. Zoom back out on a black balloon.
4. Arm on servo attached to the colorful cloth covered spinning thing (from most recent exercise) pops balloon
5. Stop motion pipe cleaners and ribbon spill out
6. Pipe cleaner crawls up onto color wheel
7. Zoom back out of color wheel but now there’s a pipe cleaner on it

Our process: We had brainstormed the color wheel, cloth thing, and balloon bursting caterpillar in advance and put them together to form a singular stream of consciousness creating a loose narrative so that there would be an experience which was cyclical in the same way as many of the effects involved.

(Haobo Wang, Katherine Wang, Paul Calhoun, Rebecca Marcus, Xavier Apostol)