THIS IS JUST [DIGITAL] — ART

AUSTRALIA

The Afterlife…..

The afterlife can be many things.

To some it happens after you die,

another form or existence

To others

It may be a spiritual

or material change.

From an old life, 

and now,

a new life.

Or, it may just be the memories of someone,

that remain in the minds of those that knew them.

Imperfect

Fragments, reflections, that change and perhaps,  fade with time.

The Afterlife,

                   this Afterlife.

Its a transition, another plane of existence.

A reincarnation.

Something, transforms to the

Here

Now

But a transition does not need to end in stasis.

This installation changes, minute by minute, hour by hour

day by day and month by month though the year.

Here

A biological entity, a plant interacts  with its immediate environment,

Light, Humidity, Temperature and wind,

and the whole is abstracted into this plane, 

its parallel afterlife.

This is the abstracted, imperfect fragment of a small piece of my garden.

Now

A flex sensor captures the interaction between the plant and the wind and transformed into movement.  It does not measure the wind .. it shows how the plant responds to it, a dance between its structure and the currents of air that move past it..

The interaction is also transformed into music.  e.g a Vibraphone plays each bend in the stem of the plant In the outdoor furniture part of the installation, ( you may need to turn your sound up  and make sure Ambient sounds are on and at max in Prefs/Sound and Media )

Now

The other parts of the immediate environment.

Light, humidity and temperature, and their various combinations,

are transformed into the colour palette used in the active elements of the installation. 

I call this Envirocoloured.

On the top level there are two sculptures that use colour from the environment and movement from the plant to shape the prims that compose them.

Additionally there on the top and ground level there are flexible prims that transform the movement of the plant in two different ways.  They are also envirocoloured.

On the bottom level there are also 3 lamps hanging from the bubble stairs.  The centre of each are coloured by one of the colour combinations and the glow emitted by it shows the amount of light currently in the garden. The centre prim of these lamps is envirocoloured and the amount glow will tell you if its day or night in Sydney Australia.

The writing on the signs are coloured by the environment in the garden and will change colour throughout the day and seasons.

The Installation Title – The Emanated Garden

Comes from Emanationism, a religious/philosophical/occult set of ideas  – “Each succeeding plane of manifestation is causal to the next, a world-view known as emanationism” 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astral_projection and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanationism

Other Stuff

When we as artists look at a object or area that we want to interpret we use our senses to take an abstraction of reality and re represent it in various ways. 

Perhaps we choose to nest it in a conceptual framework or to take photo realist approach or, we may further abstract what our senses tell us into something that is a combination of what the artist see outside of themselves and what is inside..

Furthermore…

We are no longer limited as artists to our biological senses, we are in the fortunate position of being able to use other senses that have been created to extend our reach into the world.

Technical Stuff

For those interested in the details of the installation.

This is an installation that stands in two worlds, the physical world

and the virtual world.

In the physical world the tools, the eyes and ears in the world are

a temperature and humidity sensor, a photo sensor and a flex sensor.

These are connected to an Arduino WIFI Rev2 microprocessor and via the internet (a server located in San Francisco)  virtually to the sim physically located in Italy and, by those who have a presence here, throughout the world

The colour palette is composed of combinations of the environmental variables Light, Humidity and Temperature that have been mapped to the range 0-1 ( Bureau of Meteorology historical range for each month  of the max and min for Temperature and humidity has been used to determine the zero and one points). Note however the micro climate of the sheltered part of the garden is a going to be a bit different..

There are six unique combinations of light, humidity and temperature.  Each of these combinations will of course vary in colour as the conditions change through the day and throughout the year.

With the exception of the decorative sculptures on the walls I have limited the palette of colours in this installation to these six combinations. Each one of the combination will change depending on the current levels light, humidity and temperature.

The flex sensor measures the flex of the plants stem 4 times every 2 seconds.

Here I have abstracted out the movement into to separate groups so that each group  takes 1 of the 4 measurements in 2 seconds. Partly due to the response time of flex.

Music

I use individual notes of each instrument ie A2, B2, C2 etc.  The amount of bend.flex in the plant stem determines which note is played.  (Also a small amount of unavoidable microprocessor/sensor noise is present.  This adds interest to the build and has been retained.  Life and it seems, this Afterlife is best when not totally predictable) 

I use up to three ways of fitting the range of the plant stem bend to the range of notes..  1/ manual where I leave it to run for a while then use the max and min bends found to fit it to the range of notes used.  2/ A running min and max so that the range is determined for as long as the script runs (ie should eventually be over a year thus minimizing the note range) and 3/  the max and min only over the last 60 readings (2 minutes) and  updated so that the note range is dynamically extended  

In the outdoor furniture area (vibraphone) i use all three methods and this gives some pleasing variation. 

To hear the music properly it requires a client that supports TriggerSound Limited  that allows the sounds to be partitioned to set areas.  e.g. FirestormOS

Sensors and the associated Arduino WiFi microprocessor have a small amount of electronic noise.  This lends a gentle amount of background movement to the flex when conditions are calm. When windy though the difference is quite noticeable.

This  is all in real time.

Acknowledgements

Unless otherwise stated all scripts, textures and models (mostly sculpts)

are my original work.

Single note samples/pads  from  freesound.org

Vibraphone by Komponist 

Kalimba samples by kostasvomvolos

Ambidrone by Chronos

Standup Upright Acoustic Double Bass by pjcohen

SteamPipe Multisample  DreamPad by Jovica

Melodrone multisample  – Invisible Choir – E3.flac by Jovica

Flute note samples generously donated by Lorin Tone  

Sit and tp scripts from the SL wiki.

For the Arduino WIFI code I used the Library WifiWebClientRepeating code as a base, added the code to pick up the various sensors and 

added more code to change it from a client to be able to post the data to my web server.  

Finally I would like to thank and acknowledge Art Blue and Juliette Surrealdreaming for the opportunity to do this installation and 

and their assistance in making this possible.

I would also like to thank Art for his encouragement regarding the replay function.