openFrameworks

DESKTOP 0 by Nik Hanselmann

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/7497525]

DESKTOP 0 is a project that creates glitch art out of your desktop. I love the idea of having the “canvas” for a work of art reach beyond the container—here, going beyond the app window to wreak havoc with your desktop’s display. It’s kind of like digital installation art, that can be explored in a personal and individual way. I also think a lot of graphical glitches are beautiful (I actually have a collection of screencaps when unexpected graphical glitches happen to me) and so I’m pretty drawn to interesting uses of glitch art. It’s a pretty self-contained idea, but I think it’s really funny and well-done.

Balletfont for WK12 + Fashionbuddha for the Oregon Ballet Theatre

Balletfont is another interesting motion-tracking typographic project. Ballet dancers performed particular typefaces (performing motions to trace the shape of certain letterforms), and the tracking data was cleaned up and manipulated to create vector files for a typeface called “Ligne”. I love how the variable weight of the characters suggests some kind of variable motion—they look very fluid and expressive. I think there’s some interesting strategy here in terms of what motions the dancers chose to illustrate the letters, using which parts of their bodies, &c. The character of the typeface is very curvy and dance-like and clearly shows the medium of the original data.

Darkstar’s “Gold” music video by Sembler

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/15391189]

Sembler was commissioned by Darkstar’s record label to make a music video for the single “Gold”. Their intent was to visualize the idea of memetic contagion, and the growth and transfer of ideas within the mind and between minds. The result mixes video and openFrameworks-generated particle animations (3D point clouds cast on models of each band member’s head). I think sometimes the video relies too much on depicting typical such technology much code wow kinds of screens that look kinda cool and CSI-y to a non-technical audience, and that trope isn’t very interesting to me. But the visualization is really, really beautiful, and I really like the idea of “digital mixed-media” where fairly clinical/rigid 3D models and medical-scan-esque images of the faces and brains are juxtaposed with the more fanciful particles. I do wish the particle growth/changes were animated a bit more!