2018
demonstration video, music by Smith and Micheal Drews.
For the IN Light IN festival 2016 I created a particle-based animation system to allow the audience to drive the projection and “play” the imagery on the 360°, 1,152 sq-ft canvas of Big Tent. In the process I stumbled upon a chaotic system that appeared reminiscent of cellular life, with many unique behaviors emergent from a single, simple computational model.
After a long hunt to isolate the ‘feature,’ the result is a 3D particle world that feels like it is teeming with artificial life. Little creatures and small cellular organisms swim around, dance, and play with one another. The audience can use Wii controllers to ‘stir the pot’ and excite different areas of the primordial digital sea shown.
While a single attraction based algorithm is used (similar to a ‘swarm’ model) the innovation here is in the use of a preset ‘noise map’ that determines how individual particles relate to their neighbors (or perhaps ‘siblings’). Rifts in the noise map cause groups to form, and the character of these neighborhoods apparently produces a wide range of fluid, connected movement!