Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
This is an interactive performance made to illustrate the song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" by The Beatles. This work was done in collaboration with Paulina Kocan (dancer/performer).
produced by: Rita Cabrito
Introduction
For the term 2 final project, we had to re-imagine an artwork as an interactive installation/performance. I thought that a collaboration piece with my friend Paulina would be a great idea. I never had the chance to properly collaborate with someone before so this seemed like the best opportunity to do so. We worked together on creating a video clip for the song "Lucy in The Sky with Diamonds" by The Beatles.
Concept and background research
I knew I wanted to use collaboration for at least one of my projects for this course, and this one seemed like the best opportunity to do so due to the interaction aspect that comes with it.
I started by choosing the song I wanted to work on, I needed something that had the potential for strong visuals and "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" by The Beatles ended up being a perfect choice. This is a song that has so many changes in the lyrics and each part of the lyrics is completely different from the previous one, which allowed for a huge amount of different visuals to be incorporated into one video clip.
After selecting the song, we filmed for 3 days and edited the video for another 4 days. After everything was ready, I started programming the visuals based on an initial sketch I had made on paper. For this project, I used computer vision with ofxOpenCv and ofxFboBlur addons on openFrameworks.
Each scene created was inspired by the lyrics of the song. There is a total of 11 scene changes: music notes, tree fractal, eyes, spinning, dancing, walking fingers, taxis, dancing, hair, eyes and dancing. It was incredibly fun to be able to create something like this and also have the opportunity to collaborate with another creative mind. We ended up having a lot of fun and left wanting to collaborate again on future projects.
Future development
For future development, I am not sure if I would develop this project further in particular, but I do have some ideas for future projects using interactive computer vision technology. I am part of a skateboard community, so I would really enjoy editing a video and incorporate some interesting visuals with it. I have never seen both visual programming and skateboarding clips combined, so I am very interested in exploring that area. I would also really enjoy collaborating with Paulina again on another performative project.
Self evaluation
I really enjoyed this project, it was my favourite to do so far, both while creating and the final result. I think I developed my skills significantly since the last term, and I am very satisfied with my work so far. I am eager to learn more and expand my possibilities within openFrameworks.
Overall I am very happy with the final result I achieved, I put a lot of effort into it and I think that it shows in the final result.
References
"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" by The Beatles https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naoknj1ebqI