This project as well as the semester have come to an end. It was an excellent and over all positive learning experience. And one from which I’m stepping away from with new knowledge about code, projection mapping and projecting. Many thanks to Mitchell Whitelaw and the BEAM collective for their guidance along the way.
As I mentioned in my last post, after carrying out the trial run there were still a few minor details to take care of before the final run. I had to change the palette for other high contrast colours and find a way to make the paths which the text was drawn on avoid the windows. The first part was easy, and it was just a question of finding the right colour to replace the troublesome red with. After seeing how well white displayed in a number of the others’ projections I decided upon a pale almost white pink. The second part was a bit harder to achieve. Mitchell had suggested, I look into enabling the use of the arrow keys in my sketch. So as to be able to manually move the text paths away from the windows. I managed to get the paths to move the problem was that all the paths moved at the same time and I could not figure out how to code a way that would let me choose which path to move. Finally, Mitchell again suggested to have the pressing of the spacebar set new paths. This I think added to the dynamism of the piece because not only was the text moving but how it was drawn could now be changed also.
Overall I believe the twitter piece was successful. I think the typographies and their size was fine, the text was big enough to be legible yet it did not venture into commercial, billboard size territory which is a characteristic that I wanted to avoid, believing that it would give the piece a different reading. Instead with the typographies how they were and the text being drawn on the paths a character at a time the feeling of the piece was more of a retro and typewriter one.
By having the pressing of the spacebar draw a new set of paths and the enter key change typography and it’s colour the piece became more interactive than what I first intend it to be. Having the ability to interact with the piece even if it was in a minimal scale made it for me more of a performance piece, specially on the day of the final run. Because even though the sketch can run on its own, the piece still depends on someone pressing the keys for it to fully run. Which arises problems of timing and rhythm of the piece and given more time I would have liked to explore such features.
This project has room for other versions of it and as I think about them I realise that the piece could have taken up any of these possibilities and become more of a polished final work. These versions could maybe integrate more keyboard interaction, more dynamism in regards to the text’s behaviour making it move at different speeds and switching orientation. Refreshing the tweets within a certain time period so as to have new text material every once in a while and not just at the beginning.
Photos of the night of the final run below.
The magic happens here at cobra's.
Twitter piece running.
