Swarm is looking for a new home!

After it's current exhibition (which will end just before February 2009), Swarm will be available and looking for a new home. Think you have a cool space (and a high ceiling)? - Please drop us a line at:

info@blendid.nl

Projectinfo:

Keywords:
Interactive 3D physical light sculpture, Wixels, Re-ACT / Interactive Light Art

Date:
2008

Extra Credits:
Hardware Development -
Blue Melon
www.bluemelon.nl

Photo credits:
Barwerd van der Plas

Thanks!: 
For the great support from both the openFrameworks and the Blender community - with a special shout-out going to: Roelf de Cock, Damian Stewart & Theodore Watson

@ Centre Artificial Light in Art:
Saskia van de Wiel & all the other amazing people who helped us out!

And of course:
Antonia, Arne, Arno, Bert, David, Evelien, Jasper, Kees, Martijn, Martijn, Nikki, Olfa, Peter, Rick, Sanneke, Simona & Tameesh!

Video:

A video registration of Swarm @ Re-Act / Centre Artificial Light in Art, Eindhoven 2008:

Watch the video of Swarm on Vimeo!

Quick Project Listing:

Click on one of the projects from the list below to learn more about some of our other work.

- Swarm
- Wixel Cloud
- Wixel Play
- Wixels
- TouchMe
- Robotract
- Demor: location-based 3d audiogame
- Jalaani
- MoCap Performance

Swarm

This mixed reality sculpture intersects a static physical swarm of light objects and a virtual swarm of moving colours that reacts to those walking underneath. Its appearance invokes associations with flocks, schools and swarms, where many individuals seem to merge into a single superorganism with its own distinct character.



Swarm is one of eight interactive works selected for Re-ACT / Interactive Light Art – an exposition of art installations and objects, all with some form of built in interaction. In our case the position of people under the installation is used to attract a swarm of coloured light which travels through the sculpture. When no-one is engaged in direct playful interaction with the piece, it will start displaying its own decorative behaviour.

For the design of Swarm we made use of Blender and some custom built tools to generate the six meter wide swarm-like shape consisting of almost 500 elements. The control software was created in openFrameworks and uses flocking algorithms and computer vision to let the audience influence the light animations which fly through the sculpture.

Re-ACT is open to the public from 27 September 2008 until 25 of January 2009 at the Centre for Artificial Light in Art (Centrum Kunstlicht in de Kunst) in Eindhoven (It’s actually housed in the first Philips light bulb factory).

A girl playing with the installation

Re-ACT @ Centre Artificial Light in Art, Eindhoven