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Art & Artificial Life International Competition | Home | Entry | Editions | References | Español | |
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Déjà Vu of fresh water, a nightmare environment. This piece is inspired by the unconscious behaviour we exhibit toward our environment as depredators of nature. The loss of fresh water is becoming more important to the planet as a whole. Today fresh water supply around the world is limited inevitably creating a world crisis. As an artist I wish to on touch the sensitive topic through an electronic interactive environment. Thinking of water mythology arrives a creepy and beautiful being, the mermaid. Some legends suggest that mermaids existed and that they used their beautiful songs to lure sailors to their death. Only a song more beautiful than that of the mermaid would render the beast into a stone at the bottom of the sea. Influenced by the Art Deco style, which utilizes machines, automobile patterns and shapes such as stylized gears and wheels, I designed a fish (Biyo) and a mermaid (Abba) which form part of a series of creatures that live in the same era, all their names mean water in different languages around the world. Abba and Biyo live inside Julio Torri’s Mermaid Island. Mermaid Island is a visualization of the environment after the fifth sun of the Aztec cosmogony. Ollin finishes our era with earthquakes around the world, a new type of beings raise in the world. The mood of this piece is very sarcastic. The creatures are apocalyptic drinking oil instead of water, the sky is colourful because of the pollution and life is quite different. The only traces of plant life are dry trunks that exist like rocks for us in our era. In a tribute to Alice in Wonderland, the user enters the world using the tall hat of the white rabbit, as if he had forgotten it so Alice can pick it up, which in this case the user can follow him to the rabbit-hole visiting an apocalyptic future in our present. The mermaid sings while swimming around sounding like a blue whale. When the user enters the system the mermaid stops singing and arrives in front of the user. The user has the possibility to navigate around the environment with an stereoscopic vision see the fishes and erase the fast ones if he or she desires it. Fish that later will appear again as if they where infinite. When the user decides to leave the environment he drops a can inside the environment. The cans have labels of products that existed in 1920 which use animals like elephants, deers, bears, horses, fishes, pelicans, lions, roosters, jaguars, blue minks, rabbits, dogs, lambs, goats, buffalos, birds, camels and flowers for their graphics, just as if the species of today existed like a myth in the future. There is a small harp floating and giving sound with Julio Torri’s poem A Cyrce. A Circe ¡Circe, diosa venerable! He seguido puntualmente tus avisos. Mas no me hice amarrar al mástil cuando divisamos la isla de las sirenas, porque iba resuelto a perderme. En medio del mar silencioso estaba la pradera fatal. Parecía un cargamento de violetas errante por las aguas. ¡Circe, noble diosa de los hermosos cabellos! Mi destino es cruel. Como iba resuelto a perderme, las sirenas no cantaron para mí. Julio Torri 1914 How it Works The animated characters and the world they inhabit were created in Maya. To add interaction and bring the characters to life in the CAVE, the Banff Centre’s virtual reality facility, they were first exported to Virtools. In Virtools we analyzed the head tracker sensor data to adjust the stereo view, to see whether someone picked up or put down the hat, and to check whether they are looking at one of the darting fish. These events were used to trigger the appropriate animation(s) and spatially localized sounds. The mermaid Abba had four animations: one while swimming around and singing whale songs, one to arrive when a user picks up the hat, one floating while the user is immersed in the environment, and one to leave when the user puts down the hat. The animated fish dart around in various paths and when they cross the user’s immediate field of view (or vice versa the user’s immediate field of view crosses their path) they disappear only to reappear at the other edge of the field of view. Mechanical gear sounds emanate from the darting fish and the floating harp plays its tune. The sounds are localized and when the user approaches the harp the volume of the harp naturally increases and decreases as they move away. Similarly when a user leaves and places the hat on the floor the sound of a can clanking or rolling on the floor originates from the litter or can they leave behind. Tech Specifications The Banff Centre CAVE® The Banff Centre’s virtual reality facility is 3-walled CAVE®. The 3 screen walls are rear-projected with two projectors per screen. Stereo projection is achieved with circular polarized light. It runs on a PC cluster with one machine per projector, and one to run the Intersense IS-900 tracker system. The 5 speaker surround sound system is run off the cluster as well. The software and data analysis The characters and set were modeled and animated in Maya modeling software. They were exported to Virtools. Within Virtools the cluster sync, and tracker data needed for the CAVE is added. In Virtools, the interaction is added through our analysis of the head tracker data and the spatially localized sounds are added. |
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