Project Diffusion Status: Complete.
2013 was a very big year for both the City we work in: Derry/Londonderry and for creative people in the area. The City of Culture was, I think most would agree, a roaring success.
Diffusion was a really unique project, by a fantastic inclusive company called Stravaganza and under creative direction from James Pike. Stravaganza is a locally based arts organisation under the direction of Jaci Wilde which aims to bring people of varying abilities together, to engage in creativity, and to push the boundaries to enable all artists to unlock their potential.
The prelude to the sessions can be read here with an interview with James Pike which details his incredible instrument "Wave Motion" seen pictured above. This device allows a user with no musical experience, and inclusive of a range of limited abilities, to play music in a fluid way. Massive congratulations to James, who won the CultureTECH Performing Arts Challenge for his work with Stravaganza and will be heading to New York with the CultureTECH team. You can read about it here.
My involvement in this project involved the creation of the visual elements which involved the production of a custom software system to allow visual content to be manipulated from the analysis of the audio being produced from James' "Wave Motion" system. Secondly the imagery is projection mapped on to a three-dimensional structure giving it new life.
Enough jibber jabber, here's a demo so you can see for yourself.
Some of the early test renderings of content can be seen in the following videos:
test mapping from John Harding on Vimeo.
Audio Reactive Mapping Test from John Harding on Vimeo.
Lastly, the advertising poster backgrounds were created generatively by the computer, using patches created in Processing. Some of these turned out really well.
