Duration: 6:55

43 views

2

This is a sped up screen recording of a session with my interactive installation the 'NB' or 'NETTT Blaster'. This is software written in Processing (using the Eclipse IDE - so I was beginning to learn full Java) with SuperCollider providing sound. This is a project that spanned many years and was developed mostly for the Nuit Blanche North festival that happens every summer in Huntsville, Ontario, Canada. I have been in every show since it began in 2011. This year, 2024, is the first year that I will not be participating.

The project involves triangulating a source image - an image that embodies the subject of the piece - in this case is was a picture of a massive sandwich. The resulting 2D triangle mesh then served as the interface for interaction. Had this show occurred (it was cancelled due to the pandemic), there would have been a sensor table, much like the one that I had for the previous iteration of this project, CSB (see NB overview link below) which was a wooden box with a small flat surface on top (approx. 2' x 2') that had sensors on it. By touching the board, the touch sensors would activate indeterminate triangles in the mesh, filling them in with arbitrary colours and triggering the samples that corresponded to those triangles. What you see in this animation is me activating the triangles by clicking directly on them with a mouse. By playing the triangles in this way, the participant 'plays the image' thus interacting with the subject matter. All of the actions were also recorded as a table of data which was subjected to transformations and reinterpretations such as what you see in the CSB - slideshow video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPSTbpXLpos). In the knot and tree phase of the project, the new modes of interpretation were 'knots' and 'trees'. In this iteration the new mode was a pixel version of the keys pressed creating the grids that you see - simple but effective and also attractive. The point of these modes are to reveal different aspects of the activity of the participant and you can see in some of the grids that there are vague patterns which indicate some form of living presence. It is evident that these are not just randomly generated squares.

The colours of the triangles are chosen semi-arbitrarily when the triangles are clicked with the mouse. This creates a kind of 'sound painting'. In the animation I am choosing triangles not according to the sounds they make but according to the colours that they have. By the end of the video, I have settled on a satisfying field of coloured triangles. The samples that are played in the process are a by-product of this visually driven activity.

This is the final iteration of the NB project. I will however, continue to explore the possibilities of the 2D triangle mesh in future work, using it as a graph and a functioning network. You can see some of my 3D work in that regard here in the EHB2 videos (among other places):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1_q5XjAirw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEtkCiQzT7A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8TuxBrrV2s&t=12s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HegnQJfoAcY

Originally I planned to have participants use the sensor table to generate an arbitrarily formed menu of nonsense and crazy imaginary food items for sale. The events would also trigger corresponding text to speech sound samples that would read the words aloud as they formed on the screen. Since the show was cancelled, I just continued to develop the software independently into what you see here.



NB overall project page:
https://robgillthings.net/projects/nb/

Menu Advisor project page:
https://robgillthings.net/projects/nb/2020-2/

Menu Advisor event page (Nuit Blanche North):
https://robgillthings.net/shows/evnets/nuit-blanche-north-series/menu-advisor/

CSB slideshow:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPSTbpXLpos


audio albums:
Menu Advisor:
https://robgillthings.bandcamp.com/album/menu-advisor-things-music

Menu Advisor 2:
https://robgillthings.bandcamp.com/album/menu-advisor-2-new-extra-blobs

source audio material:
things music1:
https://robgillthings.bandcamp.com/album/things-music1

things music2:
https://robgillthings.bandcamp.com/album/things-music2



#2danimation #audioart #processing #supercollider #artandscience #mediaartist #mediaart #newmedia #generativeart #codeart #newmediaart #sciart #interactiveinstallation





things:

website:
https://robgillthings.net/

blob shop:
https://things.robgillthings.net/

newsletter sign-up thing:
https://robgillthings.net/email-list-sign-up-form-page/

subscribe to my You Tube channel:
/ @robgillthings

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/robgillthings/

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/robgillthings.net

Bandcamp
https://robgillthings.bandcamp.com/

Vimeo
https://vimeo.com/robgillthings

incredi-shirts:
https://things.robgillthings.net/collections/t-shirst

extreme hyperblog:
https://robgillthings.net/?page_id=6125

Linked In:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-gill-a14b1138/