Fairies just come out when you smile
This project is dedicated to kids, who genuinely believe in things we never see. We can just see things to which we are open to.
produced by: Julia Creuheras
Introduction and concept
In the middle of a room, there is a wooden window through which we can see a very typical scene that happens in a house. Someone in a kitchen just speaking with its relatives after a long dinner. The window isn't on a wall, the window is standing in the middle of the room, which acts kind of like a portal, if you don't look though the window and just look at what is in the other side but not though it you can't see what is in the other side. The fact of looking through a window and seeing a scene that happens every night inside everyone's house, positions the viewer as a voyeur. Which, consequently, makes him feel a bit uncomfortable, but at the same time keeps him or her interested in it. Curiosity isintrinsique in all of us. When the voyeur smiles, the fairies come out. A smile is a methafore for being receptive. I really believe that we just encounter the things that we are aligned with. With that, I mean that we can just see the things that we are opened enough to see, we attract what we want deep inside.
And also I open up the question: does the fact of never having seen a fairy mean they don't exist? does the fact that we have never seen gravity (itselve, not it's consequences) mean that it doesen't exist? Kids have a huge hability to believe, and faith keeps us alive. I remember seeing the film Peter Pan as a kid and a sentence "every time someone says fairies don't exist, one of them dies". I also believe we, as adults, need to unlearn things that we have inebitably been told and re-question everything that we have learnt to create our own human paradigm more aligned with our insight believes. I propose moving towards a less constructed human paradigm.
Just as a joke, instead of a classical fairy, the images that move around the window are Fairy, the brand of a dishwashing soap. I used that image to make it less childish, so that adults could engage more with its concept.
Technical
To make this roject possible I used computer vision with the inbuildt camera in the computer. I used FaceOSC which is an addon that tracks the interesting points of a face and sends them through OSC messages to my open frameworks's sketch. I used the width of the mouth to see if the viewer was smiling or was serious. The wider the smile, the bigger the movement in the fairies. If the voyeur isn't smiling, the fairies stay behind the window's borders and when the viewer smiles they start moving again. I used ofNoise to add movement to the fairies so that their movements where smooth. OfNoise would give me a of controlled random movement. Also, to map the image so that it would perfectly match the window frame, I used projection scene manager.
Future development
To further develop my project, I would like to film a little short cut around this window which I am writing at the moment. I am doing it so that the window/portal doesen't end in a simple white cube space and has a of continuity. The play is going to have a very surreal argument.
Self evaluation
If I would have had more time, I would have given the fairies an even smoother movement and would have given them a bit more of interaction with the viewer, which I will do for the short-cut I am making. In terms of the final overall result I am pretty happy because even the code is quite simple it works well and works as i wanted it to!