SPACE
The mystical space is full of uncertainty. It gives people room to imagine and create things. I would like to show the different natures of the space.
produced by: Ho Yin Wong
Introduction
Projection mapping gives me a feeling of projecting a film in the theatre, so the design of Space is treated as filmmaking, making a space film. The visuals vary in different scenes and are connected with smooth transitions: the first scene shows the title with a news ticker wrapping the cube. News-ticker is a design element widely used in web design. It is perfect to show the sense of dimension while the words turn along the corner, followed by 4 collages that slide from the ground onto the cube and finally become a white box that is extending the space like the universe keeps expanding. On the contrary, gravity will eventually stop the expansion. Then the universe will collapse in the final scene, as the cube collapses itself.
Concept and background research
Rather than inspiration, I would say guidance. It is pretty straightforward that the whole process of conceiving the visuals is guided by instructions such as sound restrictions etc. While the given detailed instructions may obstruct our creativity, restrictions can be a good approach to brainstorm if you do not have a solid idea. Again, no sound is allowed but projection mapping usually comes with music and the visuals change according to the beat. And then I associated with the universe or under the water at no time.
The universe offers flexibility for us to create things. For example, drawing thousands of stars as tiny circles with for-loops to apply programming skills. The word choice “space” may be better than “the universe” because despite it has a similar meaning, space also entails ‘room’ that can be related to geometry. So I created the visual around the universe and space.
Beyond the third dimension, there is also the fourth dimension. When talking about it, people always associate this dimension with the tesseract/ hypercube. It reminded me of a scene from the film Interstellar. The leading actor falls into a black hole and enters a space that connects his daughter’s room across different temporalities. The visual effect gave me a strong impression and I was motivated to recreate the collapsing scene.
Technical
The optical illusion is almost an essential element for the projection mapping— While I have implemented this idea in my work, I did not want to stop at simply looping a generative animation on the cube surface. I would like to make every scene unique and repeat perfectly so I have to code a bit more to control the time for transitions and scene changes and resetting at the exact time. I think a good practice is to do this at the ofApp, the main class there. Although it is time-consuming, it is worth investing time in detail.
Future development
Having a particle system to draw thousands of stars to replicate the look of the universe is what I would like to do in the future. In the code, I have specifically structured my code with a centralized time control system, through which I will add many classes and scenes to keep the code tidy and clean.
Self evaluation
Instead of just making random optical illusions generally expected in projection mapping practices, telling a story with continuity in visuals may be a key to keep the audience’s eyes on the work. A theme helps to develop a story and the visual so that is the first step that makes everything rational. It may not the inspiration but it should be the most efficient approach. Nevertheless, it sounds a little bit boring, I still want to apply my creativity to the work so I have tried different things like using the ground as geometry although it may be in the grey area of breaking the rule. In conclusion, my work is a bit short but it does respond to my theme and what I want to achieve.
References
Interstellar - The Watch and Closing Tesseract Full Scene
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMxJnoPOFkg