Concept

Tripit is an interactive installation

Tripit is an interactive art project in which the visitor is invited to create an aural and visual experience through the placement of light-emitting spheres on top of triangular pyramids along a triangular grid. The triangle symbolizes the "play" button, starting point of a work which is alive and in permanent mutation.

It intends to explore the perception of the virtual space, relating it to the sculptural geometry of the physical space, combining them through the enjoyment of sounds and images that are created according to the choices the visitor makes.

The placement of the spheres is detected in real-time by a camera and used as input for a program running on a computer that synthesizes images and sounds, according to a virtual world model.

By establishing a connection between the spheres, the visual patterns and the sounds, the visitors will discover the rules behind the simulation, and will be able to create their own artistic composition.

Installation

Design

Installation Scheme

The system comprises 15 triangular pyramids, 15 light-emitting spheres (that may be placed on top of the pyramids), a video projector, a wide-angle webcam, a computer and a sound system.

The computer runs a program written in Clojure and Processing, using Overtone for sound (which uses SuperCollider as synth server).

Real-time image capture and processing, image and sound synthesis

The webcam should be placed as vertically as possible above the triangular base, to detect the presence of spheres, while minimizing interference due to the presence of visitors. The detection is made using a video library in Processing.

The presence of spheres, images projected and sound are unseparable. Images and sound are synthesized simultaneously in real-time, according to a simulation that depends on the spheres as placed by the visitor. Therefore, the installation is in a permanent mutation.

Patterns

As visitors position spheres, patterns may be formed, according to some rules. The presence of a patterns creates a virtual object, which moves according to some simulation, with a corresponding visual and sound effect. If a pattern ceases to exist, the corresponding images and sounds will fade out.

A sphere may be simultaneously part of several patterns. This will make the corresponding objects linked, affecting both their movement, visual representation and sounds produced.

Colours

Each position in the triangular grid corresponds to a colour: each corner to one of the RGB colours, the other positions to an interpolated colour. A pattern has a colour obtained by averaging the colours of the corresponding positions.

Prototype

Prototype

To perform tests and simulations, namely the detection of spheres by the webcam, a miniature prototype was built, in the scale of 1:100.

Visualizing sphere detection

The software that was written for shere detection revealed accurate in the prototype, allowing the project to proceed as planned.

Stages

This project has been developed with support from LCD (Laboratório de Criação Digital), an entity which promotes knowledge sharing and multidisciplinary projects.

LCD has organized public presentations of projects under development, showing the evolution of each project. Tripit was presented in three stages.

Stage 1: December 2011. First prototype.
Stage 2: May 2012. First version of the software involving image and sound synthesis.
Stage 3: July 2012. Complete project was exhibitted.

Stage #1

Project presentation - December 2011

Public presentation of LCD supported projects, December 17th, 2011.

Stage #2

Project presentation - May 2012

Public presentation of LCD supported projects, May 5th, 2012.

Patterns #1

Simulation of possibilities for patterns.

Experiments with movement and representations of patterns .

Patterns #2

Representation of the base grid, which helps visitors to better perceive the relationship between placed spheres and patterns.

Base grid is animated according to the presence of spheres.

Patterns #3

In this versions triangles are used replacing the circles.

A chord was added which connects an object representing a pattern to the corresponding birth place in the base grid.

Patterns #4

Lines were added for linked patterns, which have spheres in common.

Sound #1

First experiments with sound synthesis. Each pattern produces a base sound, and also partials depending on links to other patterns.

The volume of each partial varies according to the distance between objects. Sound volume of each channel is calculated according to object position.