Success!

Last week I began testing out the AR plug-in for Sketchup, and luckily the problem was in the way I was saving the jpg. Sketchup does not view jpgs with transparency so after a few modifications I finally had a transparent image in the AR viewfinder. I staggered the split landscape and can now project the cliff into Augmented Reality through the webcam and into my computer. So far the plug-in has a few limitations: as the pieces line up they need to be progressively enlarged to provide a faithful image, and it is limited in its 3dimensionality. As a feedback system this could be used with a more sophisticated system to have an environment altered by certain amounts of data. Say, placed in a room, the projected environment could morph positively or negatively depending on sound level, number of people, their movement through space. So the more people were in the room, the landscape would flourish, if it was a dead zone, the landscape would decay.

Setting the Table

After doing some further research into Augmented Reality I have been working with ARToolkit.

The ARToolKit is a collection of libraries, utilities applications, and documentation and sample code. The libraries provide the user with a means to capture images from video sources, process those images to optically track markers in the images, and to allow compositing of computer-generated content with the real-world images and display the result using OpenGL (Phillip Lamb, 2004). ARToolKit is designed to build on Windows, Linux, SGI Irix, andMacintosh OS X platforms.

It seems that the ARToolkit runs on a .net programming architecture instead of plugging into another programme - like the AR plugin for Sketchup, a much more direct system. So far the parts for the toolkit are downloading and then it is a matter of connecting everything together.
My plan is to separate the landscapes into components and then spatialize using either the ART or the plugin for Sketchup. The plugin requires fineagling, first in 3Dsm and then put into Rhino.

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The Wii Remote arrived and I am in the process of constructing a sensor bar. Maplin has the IR LED's thankfully!

The Tools

A few of the tools I am using to develop the landscapes in 3D are AR Toolkit, Augmented Reality and Johnny Lee's Wii Hacks. It seems like every Wii remote has been bought in the city of London, so I am waiting for one online.
The Description below is taken from Lee's website:

Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the Wii Remote

Using the infrared camera in the Wii remote and a head mounted sensor bar (two IR LEDs), you can accurately track the location of your head and render view dependent images on the screen. This effectively transforms your display into a portal to a virtual environment. The display properly reacts to head and body movement as if it were a real window creating a realistic illusion of depth and space.

The program only needs to know your display size and the size of your sensor bar. The software is a custom C# DirectX program and is primarily provided as sample code for developers without support or additional documentation. You may need the most recent version of DirectX installed for this to work.

This type of technology would really allow to experiment with change over time within the landscape. I am curious as to how it could develop away from a flat screen. Perhaps how one can occupy the same space as the 3dimensional projection.

So far I have been testing out the spatialization of the cliffs with the Augmented Reality plugin for Google Sketchup. The setup being so simple I could immediately have a simple volume projected [see below]. However when I spliced the cliff into different staggered layers, like a loaf of bread on a flat plane,  the jpg images would not transfer with transparent backgrounds, prohibiting a compounded view of the cliff when projected in 3D. Since Sketchup is so basic I am planning on working with ARToolkit and seeing if the results will be better and at a more sophisticated level.

The Reaction

Post the Barbican exhibit [mentioned below] I began thinking about how a simple information relay could be applied to my project. The siting within the nuclear fallout idea [previous posts] was a tangent that began to take ideas into a limited direction. As the three renders are landscapes within themselves, the issue of siting is there already. Furthermore by the end of the project a smooth process needs to be apparent.
S suggested spatializing the landscapes in order to test out relationships within each [cliff, forest,swamp] and as a collective. The eventual change in each site is hazy still but I am learning that not every step needs to be pre-determined. So, going back to Hemmer's exhibit, the ideas of humans tuning the space/surrounding audio could easily be translated to the tuning of any surrounding landscape. Necessary elements would be: factors [people in the room, temperature,movement, shadow], a warping device [a system that would read factors and allocate a prescribed rule of change], this change then would trigger the landscape to distort.


The previous post mentioned an interface called Reactable, a demo below. The factors that make up the interface are incredibly simple. A good model to follow when producing my own system.

Frequency and Volume at the Barbican_January 2009

This Saturday was the ending of Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's project Frequency and Volume. Not knowing what exactly to expect it was pretty brilliant to have the installation explained via one's own exploration. Meaning that if you truly wanted to understand the project you would have to look for the clues indicating the mechanics of the installation. The premise was so simple. The human body moving through the long curve of the Barbican hall is a giant tuning device for several radio stations. The stations belonged to news, popular music, maritime, aeronautical and even pirate radio stations. Volume was controlled by one's distance from a projector on the ground. The projector casts your shadow and while you move a webcam records your position in space. Position is then relayed back to the main radio control room where equalizers, amplifiers and computer harddrives calculated the appropriate radio station and volume. This setup was repeated every ten steps; if a shadow moved even slightly in either direction the station would change.

In Kevin Kelley's book Out of Control, hive mentality was explained through a similar experiment. In the mid nineties a relay system was devised so that a camera could read a room full of blue and red placards. Each person held a placard and the objective was to collectively land a virtual plane. After several tries, the group began moving instinctively instead of individually. Similar to Hemmer's project one could easily imagine a roomfull of people tuning the DJ's set at a party.
As we were exploring the exibition at the Barbican the docent gave us a mini tutorial and mentioned a similar system that Bjork used in her recent tour called Reactable.

 

The above is video taken from the Curve space at the Barbican, judging from the previous exhibition spaces Curve couldn't be more appropriate. The space one occupies to tune the radios has to be linear. The people at the exhibition seem to be missing the point, interested more in the shadow projections than the radio stations. *Notice when the giant baby shadow is cast, the volume soars.

The Skeleton of the Skeleton: The site destroyed

The idea of the site being a Nuclear Fallout result came from the last three drawings [the final layer] and this mapplet from CarlosLabs. They devised a project called Ground Zero.

"Have you ever wondered what would happen if a nuclear bomb goes off in your city? With Google's Maps framework and a bit of Javascript, you can see the outcome.
And it does not look good."

Skeletal Locations

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Shopping for Ingredients

Within the process of any project it is imperative to ground concepts with research. Looking at Theory, History or Contemporary concepts gives a new dimension to one's work. During the Christmas break it was lovely to just gather books together and collect my thoughts and those of others.
Of the phrases typed into the Library's search engine the most popular were: landscape, viral landscape, bio-morphism, biomechanics, evolutionary architecture, evolving, war, conflict, hybrid...


This waterfall of reading yielded some standout literature.


Frazer, John. An Evolutionary Architecture. Architectural Association Press. London. 1994.
John and Julia Frazer's experiments at the AA were published in An Evolutionary Architecture. AD magazine had some further articles on the Groningen Experiment, a mid 90's testing for the capabilities of computers to assist with "lazy" [Frazer's term, not mine!] architecture. Taking cues from natural selection, DNA & its creation, they applied several rules to their design. In the case of the Groningen Experiment, the logic of science was applied to the urban planning for the city of Groningen.
Basically they thought of allowing the fabric of the city to grow organically through what they termed data-structure. The Frazers conceived the data-structure as a set of points in space through which information is passed locally from neighbor to neighbor.
The Urban nature would evolve via this pattern: [the chart below was interpreted parallel to the readings].
              
This method proved an interesting possibility within the concept of viral landscape; in order to determine how the landscape would change, dissemination of said virus, etc. Using logic such as the Frazer’s data-structure and urban design pattern could lead to a mapping within the cliff, forest & swamp. Aside from a mapping, the ideas they ascribed to the growing urbanism can by similarly transferred to how the organism would operate. The Keeper is the evolver, the Instigator is the enabler; both governed by methods of control in the case of the Groningen Experiment they are a genetic algorithm [which solves replication] and a neural network [providing checks and balances within an environment]. Hence, an understanding of the technology-machination behind the Keeper/Instigator is necessary.

The Party has Begun

Post the term review, and piggybacking on the three final renders came the reality that the project had too many unanswered questions. How exactly does the organism work? Where lies the Architecture, within the organism or the affected landscape? etc, etc. So to posit any response, a scientific methodology had to be adopted. I could imagine the project unfolding in a five step process:
I. Initial Concepts (ideas that I have been grappling with from the very beginning of the project).
II. Within a site defining desired outcomes of the project.
III. Adding variables and responses.
IV. Define the method by which outcomes are achieved.
V. Testing through drawing / fabrication (models).

The Tea Party in the Swamp

The effects of the Instigator and Keeper upon one environment. Here the Swamp; in the last stages color is heightened, miltiples are exaggerated to mutate the landscape.

The Tea Party in the Cliff

The effects of the Instigator and Keeper upon one environment. Here the Cliff; not only limited to the nominal environment of rock cropping but to also Ice floes and structures within like stalactites.

The Tea Party in the Forest

The effects of the Instigator and Keeper upon one environment. Here the Forest.

The Pre-Party Invitation

 

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*I can just imagine integrating a shotcode, like the one above, into a landscape insidiously. Growing one from grass like crop circles, or stones, clusters of trees, etc.  Information could be projected into space and snapped up from airplanes or viewed from the moon.

*Image taken from Your Competent Esoteric Guide Online.

The Image Made

One of the Keeper+Instigator shells. The problem lies in surfacing the point clouds of the tentacles, massive cleaning.

Scratch that and Bake it Again: a Revision

 

This structure inherent everywhere becomes the all-consuming drive of the organism; to collect, compile an addendum of surroundings, a DNA database. This organism would be the lab assistant of Carl Linnaeus or Ernst Haeckel. Without any database the organism is limited to its seed volume. Only through the acquisition of DNA from others does it have a method of defense, feeding or survival. Within its own system, the hierarchy of information would determine what form it would take in any given situation. The organism is now a Keeper. It becomes the guardian of life itself, storing elemental data in preparation for nature's eventual obsolescence. Its brain is a hybrid of a left/right brain capability and that of an octopus. An octopus actually has two brains, one that controls its motor skills, directing the eight extremeties. While its second brain directs its survival.
  

Transmittance would occur with touch. Through a two-way osmosis, the Keeper releases nano particles into the organism as a tracking device, this link serving to transmit new skills the organism would be constantly acquiring. In return the Keeper collects both a DNA sample and a steady stream of data referencing the organism's fight for survival. Information is stored closest to the seed within. Layers of DNA are fused in thin films of mother of pearl [twice as strong as any high tech ceramic]. A product of self-assembly, the shells around the seed are formed in a sac of sea water. Surrounding the sac of water is the malleable body of the Keeper, shedding and appropriating the various forms found within the surrounding environment.  Its tentacles allow for efficient travel on both land and water. A hierarchy of exterior shells is shed or appropriated in definition to each enviromnet. A wet swamp will preclude a fin extrusion, etc.

As part of any environment, the Keeper cannot simply exist without a consequence upon its context. Like Cerebrus, the two headed guardian of Hades, the Keeper communicates with the Instigator. The Instigator operates on a nano-scale by accelerating evolution. It does so by injecting a mutation within an organism's DNA, thus constantly altering the environment. The same method of transmittance is used by the Keeper. By brushing up against or touch, mutations are disseminated into the expecting organism altering its genetic code. The Instigator reads the same stored data as the Keeper, the end result to modify the data and modify the organism. The environment is altered positively or negatively. Trees grow knobbly brances, Lily pads turn flourescent, Banyans grapple with each other to extremes.

 The organism is in constant flux to suit its environment, it is a hybrid of a hybrid of a hybrid...  Hence the shape has been a sticking point. I always imagined it form-less. The everything and nothing of Universality. However for the purpose now, the above form is how the Keeper and the Instigator are conjoined; sharing a unit of data, reading the seed differently. 

 

Image from RampantBycicle

The Image Maker

New Technologies/Methods [and learning them] is perhaps my favorite aspect of Architectural Education. Last week I got in touch with the individual that runs the Arius 3D scanner at UCL. Mainly used for Archaeological and Art History conservation purposes, he sometimes gets the random Bartlett student in for a scan. The last being scans of chicken bones. He informed me that the DAS clay model was perfect because white or off white was the ideal surface for working with. I have a few pictures below of the scanning process, sans flash and on my camera.















It is a rather large machine essentially directing light into a mirror triangulated with light passing through a lens. If both streams to not connect then the scanner reads nothing, as in spots with shadow or pitch black. The end result is a point cloud model. I was hoping to have a 3d model ready in a couple of days however the files are so incredibly heavy due to the data per sq cm that Rhino kept crashing.

Connecting the points to form a surface is proving to be difficult as well. However i have found that with a point reconstruction set, a Delauny Triangulation will work to form a mesh that needs further cleaning.

Will post renders in the future.

The Bouncer as a prototype

Hercules capturing Cerberus. 

For the purpose of this project the two headed Cerberus is ideal as a model for an organism that survives based on an input and output [Keeper and Instigator]. Both halves share the same source of energy and information found within the core of the seed.

Information is stored closest to the seed within. Layers of DNA are fused in thin films of mother of pearl [twice as strong as any high tech ceramic]. A product of self-assembly, the shells around the seed are formed in a sac of sea water.

Ingredients

These are just a few images that have been floating around in my studio, sparking ideas for the Keeper & Instigator. Thinking about why the Jellyfish or Octopus as a form are so popular when mechanics marries design brings to a conclusion efficiency.  Their shape is pared down to body and extensions which is a form perfectly suited for any environment.

Images from FFFFound

Image from Screendrafts of Matrix movies for the Sentinel robot

Image from FFFFound

Image from SpaceCollective.
Project taking Gregg Lyn's form and supersizing it into lifescaled architecture.

The Food Critics

Within an operational sense how the organism works was a big question: thinking thoroughly how it disperses within an environment, how it collects surfaces [shedding, suction cups, bio mimicry]. So far it is an "it". Where does it come from, a thistle as a generator. The energy comes from the seed. Will the seed bring forth an animal or a hybrid?
[looking into robot prosthetics to model the mixture of mechanics with a living tissue as part of an animal; if a starfish could regenerate a bionic arm instead of skin and bones]


Setting the form aside [the form seen in photographs below], the naked idea is an organism that can live in three basic environments, born out of the concept of hierarchy. This structure inherent everywhere becomes the all-consuming drive of the organism; to collect, compile an addendum of surroundings, a DNA database [remember Peter Postlethwaite in Aeon Flux, a guardian of a library in the sky that held the living memory and of every human being]. This organism would be the lab assistant of Carl Linnaeus or Ernst Haeckel. Without any database the organism is limited to its seed volume. Only through the acquisition of DNA from others does it have a method of defense, feeding or survival. Within its own system, the hierarchy of information would determine what form it would take in any given situation. The survival skills of a shark would take precedence over that of a seal. The organism is in constant flux to suit its environment, it is a hybrid of a hybrid of a hybrid... The organism is now a Keeper. It becomes the guardian of life itself, storing elemental data in preparation for nature's eventual obsolescence. 

Transmittance would occur with touch. Through a two-way osmosis, the Keeper releases nano particles into the organism as a tracking device, this link serving to transmit new skills the organism would be constantly acquiring. In return the Keeper collects both a DNA sample and a steady stream of data referencing the organism's fight for survival. Information is stored closest to the seed within. Layers of DNA are fused in thin films of mother of pearl [twice as strong as any high tech ceramic]. A product of self-assembly, the shells around the seed are formed in a sac of sea water. Surrounding the sac of water is the malleable body of the Keeper, shedding and appropriating the various forms found within the surrounding environment. 


As part of any environment, the Keeper cannot simply exist without a consequence upon its context. Like Cerebrus, the two headed guardian of Hades, the Keeper communicates with the Instigator. The Instigator operates on a nano-scale by accelerating evolution. It does so by injecting a mutation within an organism's DNA, thus constantly altering the environment.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Rupert Sheldrake deals with memory ["the basis of memory in nature....the idea of mysterious telepathy-type interconnections between organisms and of collective memories within species."] and Morphic Resonance. MR  is defined as a pattern within organisms determined not by their prescribed natures but by repitition.
..."it is not at all necessary for us to assume that the physical characteristics of organisms are contained inside the genes, which may in fact be analogous to transistors tuned in to the proper frequencies for translating invisible information into visible form. Thus, morphogenesis fields are located invisibly in and around organisms, and may account for such hitherto unexplainable phenomena as the regeneration of severed limbs by worms and salamanders, phantom limbs, the holographic properties of memory, telepathy, and the increasing ease with which new skills are learned as greater quantities of a population acquire them."

The Interacting Multifarious Guest

 

 

 

Lost Under the Table

This image was a first pass at rendering in 3D studio max. Needless to say the elementary nature of the render is useless and have begun working on a different render approach entirely.

The Multifarious Guest

     

Three Guests Change their Clothes

swamp: the important aspect was to show the above & below of the swamp environment. The two point persp. allows a magnification which is offset by the large Banyan trees which stress a vertical growth towards their roots. Banyan trees as organisms are fascinating, they double back and shoot roots to the ground, there is great potential for manipulation as shelter. *Oppressing trees is trendy in Architecture schools.




cliff: a redrawing of the first cliff idea. Continuing with the focus on verticality and sheer drop of the ice floes [inuit relocating to cliff faces bypassing the melting glaciers], playing with the possibility of either hanging structures or actually interfering withthe volume of the cliff by digging perpendicularly.




forest: splicing the view of the forest into canopy and roots. The canopy is a mode of filtration and shelter. A heirarchy existing between a macro and micro scale. The leave is a cyclic filtration at the micro scale while the trees form a collective macro filtration system. Playing around with the Fibbonacci sequence which is found in nature, is the growth of trees truly random or is there a pattern governed by reason. With the opposite view the roots and bark offer a layering of systems. From the tree's own bark as a layering over time to the idea of tree rot. A diseased tree will expose its innards while leaving the bark caseing. The Human Pappilo Virus may present itself as a growth of roots on a human's hands and feet. The virus hijacks the immune system and orders skin to grow gnarly and root like.

Notes on a Napkin

Picnic: what leads most the discussion are ideas about duality.

swamp: with the opposition of above-beneath --> what is present is the idea of decay and putrefaction. Swamps are commonly known for their darkness either figuratively or literally. Either things disappear or get stuck then disappear. Ideas of camouflage with any organism that lives IN the swamp.

From: Dark Eden: The Swamp in 19th Cent. American Culture by David C Miller

"Europeans long had feared and despised uninhabited and uncultivated landscapes. Besides their obvious dangers, such 'desert places' were thought to be ugly and evil. Assisted by an aesthetic revolution in eighteenth-cent Great Britain, however, urbane antebellum Americans took romantic delight in certain wild places such as mountains and forests. Yet swamps seemed neither sublime nor picturesque and thus retained their age-old negative connotations. In the years following the Civil War Americans sought out these newly aestheticized exotic landscapes, particularly in Florida and the Mississippi Delta."
- Miller presents the romanticized view of the swamp environment in history. This is the immediate vision we have, where hierarchy establishes decay and growth , not unlike any other environment. A horizon divides and organizes the swamp, the need for survival dictates that organisms pass through the water's surface inhabiting both the land and the water.

cliff: moving across the surface perpendicular that is itself perpendicular to the surface of the earth. Just like in the swamp, hierarchy is established but vertically relating more so to the forest than the swamp.

[Image & Article from Abitare]



[Ice Age Landscapes in Lower Manhattan]
* what a fantastic viewpoint, collapsing a subterranean wormhole with the Big Apple skyline behind the overhang. Almost as if two points of view were photographed at once without a two point perspective.

forest: After walking around this year's Frieze Art Fair this Tokyo painter caught my eye. Amongst the plethora of quickly made banal art work, his large scale forest was so peaceful. Little irridescent daubs of paint made up the entire 4m wall and cleverly the spatial treatment was to reverse what happens in real life. Meaning trees became negative space while empty space became this compendium of lavender, rose and pearl hues.

First Three Guests

The Cliff:

• The ecology of the cliff as seen in the Antartic. Alaska, with melting glaciers.

• Reality of the Inuit having to relocate due to their environment melting and becoming unstable.
• Like a domino effect the melting of the Polar Ice caps leads to effects elsewhere --> coastal zones (California, Florida & seasides) will slip underwater.
• With the cliff itself the sheer sides can provide a dwelling. Ie: rapelling and hanging pads.
• challenging the verticality of a cliff in a perpendicular manner like the Anasazi who live inside the cliff.
  

The Swamp:

• Idea of above/below --> Florida swampland where only the ghost orchid grows versus danger of alligators pikes and snakes.
• mire/stuck/heat/floating/heiarchy
• the Swamp was the end result of Hurricane Katrina breaking levees: --> Military Hydrology
• cult movie: The Swamp Thing . 1982
  

The Forest:

• Environmental canopy - shade
• ground dwellers - live in roots on forest floor often without sunlight
• canopy dwellers - rotate from tree to tree oftentimes not even going to the ground at all
• Large net where several scientists live for months documenting the Amazon or in Madagascar
• hierarchy within the verticality similar to cliff
• a collection - repitition forms the whole