Author: robgill

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.

what

a brand new pages post

“There was a whole bunch of stuff there” – anonymous

Nuit Blanche North, Huntsville, ON – Sat. July 22, 2023 – 8pm-1am

This is the interactive installation that I presented. Here are two videos. They are nice and I like them a lot. Then later on I will talk about some other stuff or whatever.

Ok great, I hope you enjoyed the special presentation today. I hope everything is great or whatever!

There might have been some stuff and I am pretty sure that there was also some other stuff involved too or whatever. There was a bunch of extra more and there was a whole new nother more bunch special nother other whole extra more bunch tymes stylez or whatever stuff or other stuff or whole extra more new nother more bunch special extra other stuff or whatever.

Oh well, right, there is supposed to be some writing. Well, here it is. This is the writing right here and I am writing it all out now for all to behold or whatever stuff or whole nother stuff. Anyways, as I was saying, there is also most certainly at some point or another going to perhaps possibly might actually by chance be writing for sure. Well I say definitely for sure or whatever stuff. There is a bunch of stuff with other stuff or an extra more or whatever stuff. Anyways, I am really getting off topic here. And really I am just writing anything and so here all of that is. Its like filler material – its like the fake pictures in frames – the placeholder art. Anyways as I was saying, or was I? Yes, it turns out that yes, I was indeed saying some things. But those things that I was saying are over now – I mean just let it go already!

oh yea this things

some things announcements

Nuit Blanche North 2023 – ‘Custom Catastrophe’

In the video below you will see the progress so far of my interactive installation, ‘Custom Catastrophe’. I will be presenting it at Nuit Blanche North this summer in Huntsville, Muskoka, Ontario on Saturday July 22 from 8pm to 2am. The festival is very interesting and entertaining and attracts quite a crowd. There is always work that challenges the mainstream and, of course, I like that! I have been in it every year since the beginning in 2011. I am proud of that so yes, I keep saying it, its true.
I am going to be at the corner of Brunel and Main (where the traffic lights are) where I will be blasting hyper turbo sounds and megavisuals all night. Participants will be able to trigger occasional avalanches of random objects (much like the spheres you see in the video) which will make accompanying sounds both whimsical and delightful in nature. Look for the projection screen and sound system located within the incredible downtown rock garden moonscape wasteland – you can’t miss it.

Note that I am now blasting my stuff out of You Tube so please sign up and like and share and subscribe and join and subscribe and share and like and subscribe so that you can get the most stuff ever!

Warning: clumps, globs, whatevers, and blobizizers will all be involved.

And really, isn’t that what we all want?

Radio Lumi

I am part of the Luminato festival this year! It is on now and runs until June 18. It is a performing arts festival situated in Toronto. For the duration, ‘Radio Lumi’ will be running a long continuous loop of music, podcasts, and discussions. Two of my brand new incredi-songs will be in the broadcast, ‘bunch of nother of stuff’, and ‘whole bunch of more’. You will hear them shortly after the segment on ‘joy’. Both of them are from the new incredible album ‘whole nother stuff’.

It is indeed a whole nother stuff.

Here’s the link!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

album:

and now,

the new incredi-song, behold!

hypersnorpage

EHB2 Prints

I have just received these prints from the printer this week and if I may be so bold, they look fantastic. I have gone out of my way to find a good printer and I have found a great one, not too far from where I live in Toronto. They look excellent – the colours are vivid and rich, the darks are darker and the whites are whiter, the paper is high quality, and the resolution is sharp. Really, part of the reason I have them made is because they look so good. I cannot resist and why should I? You can buy these prints, and there are paintings as well which are also the best ever, here.

click images to go to things

hypersnorpage

hello and welcome to my blog or whatever!

Just freshly revived and revitalized after many years of inactivity, I will be talking about my work in this blob blog. Actually, it just so happens that much of my work comes in blob form. Take for example the work that I have been posting recently on social media, EHB2, which stands for Extreme Hyperblobs 2.

It has always been my ambition to make artwork that is 3D computer animation. During high school I saved up my money and bought a Commodore 64. I tried to do bitmap graphics programming but I needed to know assembly which was well beyond my grasp at the time, plus there were zero resources around and/or those that knew hoarded their knowledge. So I ended up making graphics using the alternative character symbols on the keyboard which in retrospect is actually a great way to make graphics on the C64 (see two examples below). Anyways, what I am saying is that I am finally there and you can see the results here on my website. This is just the beginning. This software that I have developed serves as the structure within which I will be creating future interactive web artwork.

some old school C64 graphics:

There is a lot of theory behind this project and I am not going to explain all of that in this first post. I will however explain one aspect of the process. All of this work, this elaborate system running on my website (or that I present at events) is designed to produce visual results that I can take screenshots of and then make paintings from. The images you see below in this post are exactly that. This was a screenshot taken earlier this year while I was using the software and now I am making a large scale (approx. 5′ x 4′) rendition of it on canvas using acrylic paint.

screenshot of running software

just starting the acrylic painting

There are other screenshots I am planning to turn into paintings and there are options for paintings on request as well which I will elaborate on further down the line.

That’s it for now. I will close by saying that I am going to use this blog to curate my own work with examples drawn mostly from my website. I have massive amounts of material that I have spent years (actually over two decades) accumulating on this site and I want you to see and hear all of it. Yes, all of it.

Below is the first painting of the EHB2. There are four left. Each has been hand painted separately with India ink on watercolour paper (not reproductions). They are priced very low for now as a way of celebrating this breakthrough project. I have been trying to realize what you see here for many years now and it is a major part of my oeuvre. Plenty of new work to come.

Click the painting to go to my blob shop.

things and other things

 “As we have just seen, similar psychopathic phenomena are found almost throughout the world.

That such maladies nearly always appear in relation to the vocation of medicine woman is not at all surprising. Like the sick woman, the religious woman is projected onto a vital plane that shows her the fundamental data of human existence, that is, solitude, danger, hostility of the surrounding world. But the primitive magician, the medicine woman, or the shaman is not only the sick woman; she is, above all, a sick woman who has been cured, who has succeeded in curing herself. Often when the shaman’s or medicine woman’s vocation is revealed through an illness or an epileptoid attack, the initiation of the candidate is equivalent to a cure.”

“But the future shaman is cured in the end, with the help of the same spirits that will later become her tutelaries and helpers.”

Mircea Eliade ‘Shamanism’ pp. 27-28
[click above image to go to more awesomeness]

GNF

Artscape Gibraltar Point

After eighteen years, I have used every resource available to me to get to this point. Click image for project page.

 Bala Falls Noise Fields (click image)