Self
This work expresses the self-awareness through generative animation.
produced by: Uchan Sun
Introduction
The abstract generative animation that looks like atoms and strings are the metaphorical symbol of my inner awareness, twinkling and swirling. On a few scenes, I put my eyes into the moving image --- in most projection mapping works, viewers are just watching the show, feeling the atmosphere created by the author. For me, since the work came from my inner awareness, I want to “watch” the viewer back, to turn myself into the character of the viewer in this work.
There is no interaction between the viewer and the work apparently, but the interaction did exist when we’re watching each other.
Concept and background research
According to Freud's model of the psyche, the id is the primitive and instinctual part of the mind that contains sexual and aggressive drives and hidden memories, the super-ego operates as a moral conscience, and the ego is the realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego. This work is inspired by the conflict between ego and id, that is, the primitive desire and the sober consciousness.
Technical
In most scenes, I played with particle systems that generate geometrical complicated shapes to show the connections and tensions. I found that the random tweak between the parameters of sin/cos wave will produce complex surprising circular shapes. This mythology generated most of the sketches in my work.
On the “eyes” scene, I applied slit scan to create the tree-ring like patterns, showing the inner complexity in my character and interpretation of “viewer”.
Future development
For further development, I want to create a gradually growing effect of different scenes rather than sharp changes between different effects. And there should be more corresponding connections between abstract circular movement and the collage of eyes, now they look kind of separate, which may make viewers feel confused.
On the other hand, I want to put more effects on the frame of the board, to reach more complexity in geometrical interaction between shapes.
Self evaluation
Actually initially I arrange the animations show one by one in the circles, but due to the auto-refresh background error I used in FBO, they didn’t work well in the final performance. I still need to figure out how to leave half-transparent effects for visual effects.
Meanwhile, it’s a great challenge for me to develop full work only through Openframeworks. This work made me think more about the advantages and flaws of generative art through coding.
References
Freud: Id, Ego, and Superego Explained
https://www.thoughtco.com/id-ego-and-superego-4582342
Week 6 example code
https://learn.gold.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=12859§ion=6