hello and welcome to the post
Below you will find two videos that summarize the interactive installation, Custom Catastrophe that I presented as part of Nuit Blanche North in Huntsville, Ontario on Saturday July 22, 2023, from 8pm to approximately 1 am.
I have been in every Nuit Blanche North show since it began in 2011 and this is the best project that I have presented for sure. After all the successes, failures, and sheer effort and time, I can say that I have finally figured out how to produce a complete, functional, robust, appropriate to the venue, and most importantly, artistically satisfying interactive software driven installation.
I was quite nervous the entire six months it took me to complete this project because I was taking on C++, OpenFrameworks, and the Kinect sensor all for the first time. I was definitely not sure if I could create what I had in mind but the results are a surprisingly close match. With some of my previous shows I had high ambitions but was not experienced enough to know my limitations so some of them fell a bit short. I am very happy with the results of this one. Its true, C++ is fast (of course!).
I have generated an extensive amount of material from this installation – approximately 350 images and photos, 10 videos, an audio album and 17 prints/paintings, not to mention the software itself.
In the second video you can see what the set-up was: there was a screen with speakers on either side of it with the sensor just below resting on a box. The closer participants drew to the screen, the more wildly the 3D objects would move around until, standing right in front, they would finally provoke a full scale ‘catastrophe’.
The theme of Nuit Blanche North this year was “..and then everything changed” suggesting a kind of tipping point. This is embodied in my piece by a ‘translation unit’: the data generated by participants’ actions is fed into a complex system based on self-organizing criticality. You can see this system working in the video at some points: it is the teal coloured box in the upper left corner with black dots moving about inside. This process translates the participant’s actions into forces which act on the 3D objects. Self organizing criticality models phenomenon like avalanches and rice piles. Material is added until it hits a tipping point and topples. How it topples is interesting in that it falls in an unpredictable way and in a way that demonstrates emergent phenomena. I am just scratching the surface of this science – I have so much more to learn, but this does work well in this piece and produces what I would say is beautiful chaotic behaviour. Near the end of the first video you can see the objects sort of wriggling on the floor – its all quite adorable. Anyways, thank you for participating in the things. I plan on posting other material from this show in the future.
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