i’m looking forward to the 21st at the drop inn. it’s another day where i’ll be doing something new and working with people whom some of which i’ll have not worked with before. i’m preparing a new homepage for my website to give information and insite about the work.
the work is a slightly new route for me. it’s being shown at a festival so the work needs to be entertaning, well i think so. something that can be an enjoyable thing to play with during the afternoon. the festival is inside out, so no matter what the weather, the installation will be in the dry and very close to the bar.
i’ve got a working title ….. drum roll …….
and that title is
liminal tic tac toe
i wanted the title to be obvious and a little ambiguous at the same time.
the title reflects where the installation will begin for those playing with it. while researching what i could create, i realised that my work was going down a route of me realising a long term dream of creating something in the medium of video that captured the immediacy of operating a water cooled laser system at raves and dance events. the combination of the purity of the light source and the speed with which the shapes and patterns could change in real time put the laser system in a class of it’s own with regard to real time creative interpretation of what the musical sound track was doing in the space.
once i saw that i was creating something for myself to play with i started to consider how the audience might interact with what i was making.
so i returned to an old piece of programming research. i had played with making a screen output that was like a game of tic tac toe, with the mouse position being tracked to select the active area. i saw the possibility of using an app i’d discovered to be the human interface with the screen content.
now with a familiar and understandable beginning i’ve worked on having several stages post completed line that the players can influence what we see on screen. during the event there will be live music in earshot of the installation, so as well as a gaming angle there is also a vj angle to the work. i imagine the installation being used to interpret the current soundtrack of the festival.
to make the programming able to cope with the unknown of who will turn up and play, the system is set up so that all the apps all output on the same address. what this means in the real world is that i don’t know what it’s going to be like on the day as to some extent there will need to be some verbal communication between players as to where in the app controls they are at any one time. i image that if all the players can agree on which page they are playing on, there will be some really dynamic visual responses…
i’m still developing the programming and all the accompanying information. there’s two weeks before the event and depending on the time of day, i either feel amazing and upbeat and excited or just a little apprensive about will the work be enjoyed and easy to play with and will any one want to play with it. just all the usual doubt driven stuff at those tired times of the day.
the app is called the mrmr osc controller and it’s available for free from the itunes app store. the url address of the app : http://tinyurl.com/5zftax
qr code to the same url:
