Hi everyone,
tonight was the last ‘event’ of the Remedios Terrarium exhibit.  Congrat’s again!  Inspiring is the least I can say about this discussion.

It’s now time to wrap-up, celebrate and get together to share our experience of making RT.

Our exhibition closes tomorrow, Friday, at 7pm (The gallery is not open on Saturday-for sure).
Technically you can start packing your things at 7, but please don’t start before that(unless you have to -JS, Flower -ok)
The gallery has to be completely cleared on Monday night at the latest.  Wall repairs are going to get done by Lynn’s technicians on Tuesday.

After asking around all day today I think that Saturday is the best day to get together and take the biggest things down. It would be nice to do as much as possible in groups.
Sunday and Monday, I will be out of town and I don’t know how much people will be around/available to help out (except for Lenka and Desh taking the Cones down, and Flower taking care of the plants on Monday)

Strike Schedule:
Also available on the TML-Shared Google calendar  (BUT MORE PRECISE HERE)
(visible at
http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=enc0mlbupaurd8qhenaducvd0g%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/Montreal
and
http://topologicalmedialab.com/blogs/calendar)

Friday:
10 am: Tim gets the big Hexagram cart for the weekend.
–  :  JS takes some projectors down.
8.30 pm Nacando Productions launch- cocktail @ NFB-ONF  (the National Film Board of Canada) 1564, rue St. Denis, Montreal.  See RSVP list at the bottom of this email **
Do not hesitate to contact Desh if you want to come but haven’t confirmed “Nacando Productions” <nacando@gmail.com>

Saturday:
(I will take my car in case some people need to take stuff home after)
9 am, Harry and JA taking the cells and the lights down.
11am, Elena and Flower are getting started on the vitrine and their respective things.
Tim is packing the sound gear
Ayesha is taking care of Sebald Theater
Jhave is taking his pedestal and computer home.
–Patrick unavailable

Sunday:
– Patrick, Harry, Tim unavailable
– JA -out of town.

Monday:        
complete strike
Lenka - cones
– JA -out of town.

Tuesday:
10 am someone else than Tim returns the Hexagram cart, because Tim will be out of town. (any voluntary? please let tim <timothyvsutton@gmail.com> and I know.)
4-6     campfire : project debriefing.  We should revisit, things that worked well as well as things that didn’t work so well; and talk about the project documents and events documentation for project archive.

Notes:
Eliot, Doug, please make sure that one of you come either Saturday or Monday to take the sensate tapestry and related gear.
Jae Ok, and other Touch2 folks, I will take care of removing our things from the wall, but if you want to help out, just call me Saturday.
I think that the projectors are going down tomorrow because they are needed for another event in the evening.

If you were not concerned by any of the above, but you have time in your hands, or need help to take your things down, or whatever, please come Saturday 11am.

On Saturday night or Sunday I will send another e-mail with progress report and estimate of the amount of work that’s left to do for Monday.  Hopefully most of it is done.

Thanks to all for being part of RT’  Please join us in celebrating the end of this journey tomorrow night at the NFB and for the project debriefing on Tuesday during campfire (4-6 pm).

**Desh, here is the list of people that have told me they would come.  I might be a bit off, because I’m writing that by memory, but I remember that the number was 14.
1Xin Wei
2Harry
3Many
4Many’s friend
5Kiani
6Kiani’s friend
7Morgan
8Morgan’s friend
9JA
10Pascal
11Manuelle
12Francis
13JC
14Jhave ?

I’ve simplified the event topology to a bare minimum that still has a chance of flow in two dimensions, and has a beginning, muddle, end. Let’s call it the VISIT4 topology, since it’s got only 4 states: NIGHT, DAY(=DAYDREAM=DESERT), GLASS, FIRESTORM.

We media folks met and talked about the experiential aspect of these states last week. Basically, the room leaves its NIGHT activity as the clock shows it’s Gallery business hours (9 - 19h?).

NIGHT is time for the Gallery to dance (danse macabre, sibelius’ valse triste, hiphop, etc. according to the season) as you like. It would be interesting to suggest autonomous life, autonomous intentionality, locked behind glass.

DAY is when the clock shows Gallery is open for business and there’s a minimal activity in the room. (We can set the threshhold just below one-body’s-worth of activity by calibration under the Gallery’s conditions, or we can use the surveillance camera trained on the receptionist desk to see when someone is near the receptionist area.) It could be interesting to characterize DAY state as when no visitor is there in the Gallery, but it’s open, and showing its dreams. What those “dreams” are is up to the creators to interpret. We did speak about playing back processed, previously recorded material.

As visitors infuse the Gallery, the room gets “wetter” (derives more energy from visitors). As it gets wetter, more weather happens: i.e. the state tends away from DAY and toward the mixture between GLASS - FIRESTORM .

GLASS is viscuous, liquid, continuous. In this state, horizon is distinct from sky: the projections on walls are distinct from projection on the ceiling. The visitor may be able to “write” on the surfaces — only one attractor (that associated with the biggest blob?), permits writing, e.g using a scattering of dust.

FIRESTORM is violent; sparky, atoms in void. Maybe nervous in the sense that the dynamics are quite sensitive to perturbations from sensors. Eg. motion from camera input drives the particles very hard, bc the particles’ masses are low, or attractors’ gravitational masses are high.

In terms of physical configuration, what distinguishes GLASS from FIRESTORM could be how people are positioned and / or moving near the sculptural elements in the room: the Cells, the Sensate Tapestry, possibly the Suitcase in the other, hidden room.

I don’t know what activity should tend to correlate with GLASS & FIRESTORM in the most tangible or compelling way. My first cut guess would be to sense whether people (a person) are gathered close to a (any) sculptural element. For example, people “touching” (within threshhod of our sensors) any part of the Cell structure or Tapestry could send the system into FIRESTORM.

This we’ll have to work out in situ, in vivo, of course.

Here’s a thought about transitions between instruments like

water - ice - … - waterfall

One question is how to make a 2 (or more) dimensional transition between states that is more interesting than a cross fade between two (sets of ) instruments.

For example, as we approach waterfall, maybe the NUMBER of particles can increase as DAY —> 0. While the SPEED or LIFETIME can increase as FIRESTORM —> 1.

Also the responsivity of the particles to human movement as seen by the Motion patch, should increase in FIRESTORM. We could decrease the mass of the particles, or multiply the strength of the attractors associated with the movement density distribution.

As GLASS –> 1 (and FIRESTORM and DAY necessarily –> 0), the particles (if that’s what they are) could increase in mass until they are relatively insensitive to the movement of the human visitors.

Another point: as the event goes to its terminal DESERT = DAY state, the particles perhaps should return to their original constellations.

Ever since Meteor Shower, I’ve asked for being able to set the initial positions of the stars according to simply the (x,y) coordinates of the brightest N pixels in the input video (could be a static bitmap). Michael Fortin may have provided this as an external to Max, but surely this can be done, simply enough, in native Jitter.

It would also help if the instruments near the boundaries of neighborhoods of the fundamental states look the same. In other words, it would be helpful if the FIRESTORM instrument(s) look like GLASS instrument(s) for some choice of parameters. So we can make multi-dimensional transitions.

For times series that suggest “intentionality,” I suggest
1. Mapping the game controller joystick via Max to a DMX instrument
2. Parametrize an instrument
3. Use Tim’s sensor data recording tool (a very important research instrument !!!) to record the INPUT (not cooked) sensor data while manipulating the DMX instrument.

You can re-use the sensor data

Alternatively just record people’s signatures on a tablet,
Use the x,y,t data mainly for the temporal dynamics,
Map the dynamics to all sorts of temporal processes, e.g. speed (or acceleration) along a trajectory, like the moving beam trajectory, whose (x,y) path is independently determined.

This may yield effect of “intention” …

See Patrick’s drawings of cells now in the TML Galleries / album “cells” –particularly the suspension side image:

jelly + cell

2_cell

musclecells

nervecell

plant cell

shadow-projection cell

shadow-projection cell

sonic cell

structure_side_image

suspension system

I’ve sketched some ideas on the layout of the main gallery, capturing some of the discussions with Patrick, Harry, JA, Tim…. (Also had conversations with Flower, Lenka, Elena for the blackbox, and Louis-Andre, Elena, Tim, … not represented in these sketches.)

Waiting on other folks.

The idea is to cluster the head-height cells near the corridor side of the space, leaving a scattering of them in the central area. Harry suggested bouncing the ceiling projection from a suspended projector (2m from grid), off of a 2m wide mylar, for effective throw of 6m. JS should confirm with Harry & Patrick+JC whether this would yield enough coverage of image-bearing cells on the ceiling.

Perhaps the Weaving (20′ x 4′ Sensate Tapestry) could be suspended from the ceiling near the entrance to the Gallery. (Marguerite and Elliot can confer with Patrick et.

Currently, I’m assuming that JS projections go onto the walls, eg the Atrium, ceiling, and Mackay walls (if we can fit the Sensate Tapestry parallel to the short wall on the corridor side of the Gallery). Need to confirm this.

Spoke with Harry re. Lightfield. Current idea: one good place to mount the moving beam (light) would be near the grid, about 1m out from the center axis of the Atrium wall. Its beam should have a clear play over the floor, over the bench. It may (or may not) scatter through a few carefully placed, transparent, head-height cells that “trickle” into the main air space.

The other lightfield installatio, along the base of the St. Catherine wall, would work best if that wall is left blank, I think. We could project from a projector suspended from the grid flush with wall, beaming down to a 3.7m wide x 5 cm high image-bearing custom-made screen / reflective surface. The point of that projection is to transmit and transmute (perhaps contrapuntally) the activity from the sidewalk. (We can mount a web-camera atop the St Catherine wall, looking out to the sidewalk, and process it through a simple Jitter patch.)

The main atmosphere effects: I’ve been emailing / talking with JS, Tim, Morgan about the states of the room. Now I have some semantics for the VISIT topology; it can be a fusion of season and weather: spring (EXFOLIATION), summer (verdant), fall (FIRESTORM), winter (GLASS stillness).

Let’s see if we can agree on a regional spatial configuration of the sculpture + projectors & image-bearing surfaces in the main space by Tuesday morning so Harry can make critical decisions on the design of the lightfield.   We need sufficient lead time to get, build, work with the lighting gear.

This includes coordinating  the placement of projectors (one on floor + one just below grid,  near center vertical axis of left-hand wall?), on what they beam (strato-cells + the atrium wall ?), as well as the placement and visual type of the cells.
I’ve chatted with JC, Harry, JA, Tim, Morgan, Elena this past couple of days.  Soon JS.   I’ll chat with Patrick on the weekend.   I’m leaning toward one cloud at eye-level of mostly transparent cells, plus another denser cloud of image-bearing cells high up across much of the ceiling.   This way Harry’s beam will dapple through the cells when / if they intersect.

And this would simultaneously give a sense of density upon entry to the gallery, yet leave most of the floor space clear in the interior for the projector beams, the light-beam, and most importantly for the visitors to absorb the space.

On 15-Feb-08, at 12:48 PM, Harry Smoak wrote:

I’m here (in the lab) today well, but also won’t be here after 5:30.

What’s the status on the ground plan and location of projections.
Need to know for lighting.

On Fri, Feb 15, 2008 at 12:41 PM, Timothy Sutton <timsutton@fastmail.fm> wrote:
Hi all,

I’m around this afternoon, but probably won’t be able to still be here
by 5:30. In the meantime, I’m plucking away at learning the basics of
FTM and this concatenated synthesis stuff.

On Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 12:34 PM, Prof. Sha Xin Wei
<sha@encs.concordia.ca> wrote:
Hi Morgan, JS,

JS said he has some patches for multiclocks that he’ll give you.

Gentlemen — please  coordinate ASAP to avoid duplicated effort.  I’m
assuming that Morgan if you can supply the clocks by Friday then  this
should strike off of JS’ list,
so JS can focus on creating the Jitter instruments that I and Morgan can
drive,
Hope to see the Jitter wraps at least
by Friday
so we have an API  public layer to code against

When I am free Friday end of the day,  I’d like to  see you guys netsend
some dummy engine params from one Mac (Morgan’s and My Macs)  to another Mac
running a JS patch.

Netsending and Receiving 3 floats (for clocks), and a 4-vector.  Dummy
visuals is OK!  We must get the the plumbing in place. and work outward
from there bc then we can get into roughing in the entire show.

My approach is to sketch the entire 20 day event and work in the
implementation details as we go, depending on the materials and elements (eg
sculpture, soundfield, lightfield)  as they emerge.

Let’s aim  to get some rough overall timing in place by the end of our next
programming session.

State 0 _ EMPTY - NIGHT
State 1 - INSIDE
State 2 - OUTSIDE
State 3 - MOB

Understand that this is just one topology , and that the topology may change
to a 5-state one with very different semantics.

The 5-state dynamics will allow a more meaningful transition from NIGHTLIFE
to  DAYDREAM

Thanks
Xin Wei

For the next two weeks, the video production room (EV-10.760) will be the space where we are going to test  projected graphics onto different kinds of materials. Check out the pictures from the setup session. It’s going to be a lot of fun.