Been busy in Oslo of late. Two talks about various aspects of Squidsoup’s work during Kedja and gRIG conferences, and another outing for Freq2 during Kedja. The Kedja conference, on Dance and New Media, also features a 96 page publication on various aspects of interdisciplinary dance and new media. Contributors include Johannes Birringer, Ghislaine Boddington (body>data>space), Stuart Jones and Anthony Rowe. Rowe’s contribution is entitled ”Developing creative audience interaction”, and analyses four Squidsoup projects. The cover (see above) featured Freq2. Hard copies available from Lise Amy Hansen, and a PDF will be available soon.

Glowing Pathfinder Bugs and old favourite Ghosts are both to be shown at iDesign, part of London Design Week, on THURSDAY 24th SEPTEMBER – and also a short talk in the afternoon.

Bugs is also being shown in Liverpool on SATURDAY 25th SEPTEMBER, outside FACT, as part of AND (Abandon Normal Devices).  More here.

Onedotzero at the BFI also went well last weekend – the sand made a nice mess of the carpet… images below and more here.

Glowing Pathfinder Bugs will be shown at this year’s onedotzero’s adventures in motion festival at London’s BFI, as part of onedotzero_sprites.

Note Bugs is shown on SATURDAY 12th and SUNDAY 13th September only.

Here’s a reminder of what Glowing Pathfinder Bugs is about:

And here’s a link to some more information

Glowing Pathfinder Bugs is a Portable Pixel Playground commission by Folly

Video documentation of Discontinuum at Festival Bains Numeriques, Enghien-les-Bains, Paris in June 09.

Full screen HD version HERE

Discontinuum and Ghosts were curated by body>data>space for Bains Numeriques 2009.

More information on the project HERE.

Music courtesy of The Necks (excerpt from Townsville)

Discontinuum runs on a NOVA 3D LED cube, produced by ETHZ/Horao GmbH

ETHZ/Horao’s Christoph Stahli has also produced a short document on Stealth – still running in Belfast for ISEA at the Ormeau Baths Gallery:

Stealth installed and running at the Ormeau Baths Gallery, as part of the ISEA 2009 exhibition.  It will run from now until 30 August.

Other images (of Stealth and other projects) here.

The Stealth project is built on the NOVA 3D LED grid (courtesy of ETH / Horao GmbH) and uses 2 monome64 devices.

We had an enjoyable and interesting time at Enghien-les-Bains for the Bains Numeriques festival, where we showed three versions of Ghosts, and new piece Discontinuum.  Many thanks to Emmanuel, Celine and all at body>data>space.

Discontinuum was part re-developed in situ, as the piece was positioned inside the church of St Joseph, and we felt it needed to reflect on and respond to the space more.  Live footage from a hidden webcam was mixed with static imagery taken from the stained glass windows in the church; the brilliant colours of the stained glass becoming reproduced within the NOVA cube.  More documentation soon…

In addition to the usual festival goers, we had a lot of interest from the church-going community – rare access to a completely different audience, whose responses were surprisingly positive (at least once the fact that the piece was a reflection on the place was understood).

Discontinuum has become an evocation of place as well as an exploration of the visual possibilities of extruding live imagery through space and across time.  ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology)/horao GmbH (who designed and built the NOVA)  are planning to show a version of Discontinuum in Zurich; evoking another place (or idea) will be an interesting development for the project.

Ghosts worked well inside the Mediatheque George Sand, using a tryptich of plasma screens to good effect, the three screens in various states of legibility, and reacting immediately and simultaneously to text input.

On other fronts, preparations are underway for ISEA 2009.  The exhibition starts on 7th August at Ormeau Baths Gallery in Belfast, and runs through to the end of the ISEA conference on 30th August.  The Stealth project should be running throughout.

Also looks like we’ll be showing Glowing Pathfinder Bugs at the onedotzero festival (South Bank, London) in September – if you have a design week subscription see this from the mouth of the man himself

Future of Sound (Arnolfini, Bristol), 25 April 2009
Promises to be an interesting day of talks, workshops, installations and performances at Bristol’s Arnolfini.  Details here. 
Freq2 will be shown, and there will be a short talk in the afternoon.

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Soma Museum / Art Centre Nabi (Seoul, South Korea), 30 April – 21 June 2009
A group exhibition featuring various digital interactive artworks aimed primarily at kids.  We are showing Glowing Pathfinder Bugs (its first outing outside of the Portable Pixel Playground), Virtual Puppeteers and Freq2.  The exhibition is called ALICE (“Artistic, Lively, Intelligent, Creative, Eco-friendly kids”).

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Bains Numeriques (Enghiens-les-Bains, Paris), 5-13 June 2009
Ghosts (three types) and the first outing for Discontinuum – an exploration of de/re-constructing webcam imagery over time, using the glorious NOVA 3D LED grid, courtesy of ETHZ/horao.  Bains Numeriques is an annual event that takes place in a suburb of Paris.  Should be fun – Peter Greenaway and Stelarc are both partaking this year.  We were invited by body>data>space .

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ISEA 2009 (Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast, Northern Ireland), 7-30 August 2009
A second outing for Stealth, first shown last October at the V&A, at ISEA (International Symposium for Electronic Arts).  The piece is both a game and an exploration of 3D visuals in physical space, and also runs on the NOVA.

We tried crossing two beams of light inside a block of aerogel, thinking it might somehow produce a brighter point in 3D space.  It doesn’t.  However, some beguiling effects can be obtained, in 2D and in 3D, using two projections onto a block of aerogel.

Perhaps reminiscent of dappled sunlight and silhouettes of passing strangers, this is actually two projections of Outtake – a version of Ghosts from 2003 – from different angles onto a small block of aerogel.

Also – rendering of the Mac dock into 3 dimensions

Miniature mockup adding realtime shadows

Still of Outtake projected onto aerogel.

Aerogel supplied by Airglass AB

Folly’s Portable Pixel Playground – March 7th – Tullie House, Carlisle.  And more outings to come.

http://www.folly.co.uk/node/1358

Glowing Pathfinder Bugs, a playful piece commissioned by Folly, has been shown at several Portable Pixel Playground events in 2008 and 2009.

The bugs analyse the shape (topography) of the sand around them, preferring to move gently downhill.  This means they can be shepherded, enclosed within walls of sand, encouraged to meet each other (at which point strange metamorphoses happen; they merge into larger caterpillars then, if you’re lucky, into butterflies.  If they get frightened, they pop and disappear.

And with kids, this is what happens most often…

http://www.squidsoup.org/bugs

A 3D visual deconstruction of time and space. Work in progress.

A camera feed is passed through physical space over time, creating imagery that contains fragments from a range of times simultaneously. Unlike a 2D image taken over a long duration – which would essentially be a blur – the time is ordered in the third dimension, as if time was flowing in a particular direction.

Seen from ahead, the image is superimposed on itself, similar to its 2D counterpart, but from other angles, the flow of time through space can clearly be seen. And from behind, time slowly fades away into the distance.

The project builds on ideas first implemented in squidsoup’s Freq2 – www.squidsoup.org/freq2

Discontinuum is a Squidsoup project, in collaboration with ETHZ and horao GmbH.

www.squidsoup.org www.nova.ethz.ch www.horao.biz