CrossingsFirst workshop: Roehampton University 21/02.05 - new visualisation Second workshop: The Place |
Mapping ideas
The start of a seaweed animation
The mesh is generated as states informed by the agent position between given
time states. Rather than drawing the presence of the individual agents, the
mesh reflects the speed and movement of agents as a collective.
The mesh is conceived as an evolving topology, an ossification of the presence
of the agents. The mesh draws the joint presence of the agents and performers
over timeframes that exceed the moment of the interaction feedback loop. It
is only over a larger timeframe that the audience will build an understanding
of its build and decay.
Each mesh is pre-defined in resolution (mesh must be generated on initialise) but continually deformed. The complexity of the mesh comes into being through the slowing down of the agents as they negotiate the presence of the performers. The mesh is informed by the collective movement state of the agents, gaining input from their position at given timeframes. When the agents slow down (when navigating the performer) the mesh-resolution becomes higher.
Despite being predefined in resolution and depth, the mesh seems to be evolving as it doubles up on itself in the start. (E.g. that the vertices and the planes lie directly on top of each other.
The mesh is continually deforming with the movement of the agents. Larger vertices move faster, smaller slower, creating a feeling of stasis around the stoppages generated by the performers.
When agent-cluster in certain areas persist for longer than a given time-frame, the mesh will splice and create a second layering (depth). Vertical planes between the upper and lower level will create a further depth.
Roots
The vertical planes create root-structures that accentuate the verticality of the structure. An idea is that these have skeletal joints in the mesh but dangle free as they come down. Perhaps the roots are moved by the particle streams.
The mesh has an own internal measure of decay related directly to its means of deformation and depth. The denser the mesh is the slower it decays creating ossified rudiments of the former movement states (of performer and agent).
The mesh is defined through degrees of translucency, the denser the mesh is the more thick or opaque it becomes. (this is actually opposite of what will happen in the free modelling of it – as the doubling up of vertices and planes will make the planes darker when simpler. Perhaps this is a nice inversion – perhaps we need to change this around).
Perhaps the mesh should deform (bend) downwards the more dense it gets.
Is it true that the mesh must be pre-defined in resolution and vertex order?