ธีรกิต

Electric Aqua

Interactive

April 2009

Awarded Honorable Mention at the 2008 Senior Project Awards, Computer Engineering Department, King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi.

Progress/Proposing Poster

The sense of motion which reflects vivid life within a masterpiece tends to come from the renderer’s sheer talent. To complicate the situation, the renderer or artist may seek more than just to project an emotion of life onto the canvas, but to add a completely new dimension in which true interactivity can be found. Interactivity in which a still painting in the shadow, animates at the mere hint of light. In particular, the portrayed object may seem to jump free from it’s constraining bounds of the frame.

By bringing code into the equation, the problem may be looked upon from a whole new perspective. In code, the art process is reinvented just like good art should be. Differing from the use of paint, we are now looking at a masterpiece generated from code. Code that is manipulated in a way that select variables are used to add a sense of interactivity, a contribution between the artist’s desire and the pleasure of the observers.

Early Prototype

Interactive art is explained to be an art installation in which the spectator is involved by, but not limited to, walking-in, on, or around the installation. To gain this interaction, a vast range of sensors is used for input and a variety of devices for output. The installation is totally up to the creativity of the artist but must be able to interact with the observer in terms of creating a dialogue between the observer and the artwork. Most Internet and electronic art are clear examples of art that is highly interactive.

A straightforward but interesting work of art can be generated from this pixel array by assigning random objects in a grid across the screen. Setting the size of each object to the motion value at that corresponding point achieves the artwork found above.

Aqua Implementation

To give the work of art more detail and interactivity, adding particles generated at high values of motion like shown below create digital water splashes giving the masterpiece a true sense of electronic aqua.

Particles Demo Photo Captured Film Strip Final Poster