Before the spring of 2024, I was vaguely familiar with the processes behind interactive art exhibits. I have ventured to a few museums with projector installations and virtual reality exhibits but rarely delved deep into the creation of interactive art exhibits besides building a visual mixer for vjing in touch designer. I saw the opportunity to join a team for a semester to create an interactive art exhibit for a local DJ collective and had to take it!
I had messed around with touch designer for a few months beforehand- following random youtube tutorials until I felt as if I had a strong enough basis to start some projects of my own. At the time, I didn't have resolume and wanted to work with a midi controller for real-time video mixing and manipulation. Over time, the complexity built up and it had a scripted bpm clock, countless bpm synced effects, and even some well-needed optimization and filtering to preserve performance. I had then used this rig at a few shows locally and it worked a lot better than I thought! I had inadvertently learned a lot about video routing, projection, and formatting throughout the process.
Heading into this team project, I felt incredibly prepared to tackle the technical challenges of creating an interactive experience. However, after finishing the experience, I realized I was not ready for one thing: clients.
The basis of the exhibit was to create an interactive art exhibit that would coincide with a DJ set from a local collective. That was all the direction we got for the project. As a group, we were tasked with creating a meaningful experience for attendees. Ultimately, we settled on breaking the core fundamentals of dance (an important part of the collective) into an expressive and physical layer. The physical aspect of the dance was captured using a thermal camera, which was then manipulated in touch designer and then projected onto a translucent surface which allowed participants to see a reflection of themselves on the box in front of them. The expressive layer was embodied with an xbox kinect that was then used to displace a particle simulation in touch designer.
A Temporary Installation for Imagine
As stated earlier, the technical aspects of this project went quite smoothly. Routing was seamless and programs worked efficiently, the large unexpected issue was working with clients indirectly (and inefficiently).
