I was a bit remiss in not contextualizing Martin Böttger’s work with his other generative 3D forms. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the potential of 3D – not because I’m especially talented with it, quite the opposite. I’m drawn to the expressiveness of 3D the way someone longs to play a cello. Martin has done some great stuff in making 3D forms in Processing, as well as in actual physical space. No fancy 3D printers here – think folded paper and hand-made installations. I imagine this would be a great way to learn coding in 3D, to actually do more work with physical objects. I’m teaching up at MassArt this summer, so maybe we’ll get to experiment with this a bit if students want to go that direction.

http://www.flickr.com/people/tsaworks/

There’s lots of good stuff in Martin’s Flickr feed, and as always, I thoroughly enjoy seeing things in various states of completion – like looking through sketchbooks.

If you’ve got some 3D modeling / generative work you’d like to share, feel free to drop us a line!

You know it when you see it: media starting to actually evolve past what you expect, mimicking each other, and pushing at the obvious sense of what they are. One particularly exciting trend is real-world, kinetic sculptures influenced by digital media and taking on new movements and shapes. It’s the kind of thing I hope will push those of us working in software and projection to push back and make our medium look different, too.

Via Toxi, here’s just that kind of work, a kinetic sculpture at the BMW Museum. I find it “interesting” immediately, but the poster notes that things get even more fun a minute in.

The work comes from our friends at wildly-talented design house ART+COM, one of a number of interactive installations they designed for the museum in Munich. Previous creations of theirs include the moving floating.numbers in 2004 for the Jewish Museum, and an exhibition that let visitors enter an alien world at the London Science Museum.

Here’s the official video, with annoying music – hit mute and put on a favorite track for a better effect:

Also seen on Engadget.

And BMW in general seems to be fans of kinetic sculpture in general. They shot this terrific-looking ad using Theo Jansen’s insect-like, walking sculptures:

It’s been a long time coming, but projection is slowly making its way out of the single, flat rectangle that so often constrains it. (Not that we don’t love single, flat rectangles, of course.) The idea itself isn’t new, but artists are becoming increasingly interested in creating sculptural, three-dimensional projections. We saw Joanie Lemercier’s gorgeous Light Sculptures. Here’s another example of three-dimensional projections:

Pablo Valbuena, Augmented Sculpture [Artist page]
More info and video: Augmented Reality Sculpture Makes You Think You Are Tron [Gizmodo]

Doesn’t look like much in still photos; in the video, it comes alive:

And for another video example, here’s antivj’s Light Sculptures in action:

Via Philipp Steinweber’s “Blog About Work”

Tired of flat surfaces? Joanie Lemercier, known by the name antivj, was seen here recently with a terrific tutorial on Wii VJing. Now antivj is back with a terrific video performance, projecting onto 3D forms.

just did a new video, and I thought you might be interested as well: it’s a visual performance I did in January (for clubtransmediale festival in Berlin). The idea is to use regular projectors to project on 3D elements and volumes instead of screens. It’s called “visual mapping” (here on some sculptures done by visomat)

Visomat, Inc. did the polygonal forms, as Joanie added a second layer of “light sculpture.” It’s far more satisfying than just watching virtual polygons projected: the 3D forms are real. Video and lots of images at the project site:

Light Sculptures @ Club Transmediale

I hope we’ll see this more regularly. Of course, that probably means some of us visualists not lucky enough to have a collaborator better learn some physical sculpting skills fast — and re-learn how to get projection onto surfaces!

Artist Jonathan Schipper has built some fantastic sculptural creations, including this enormous sphere of television monitors. The scale is impressive: 800 pounds, 215 monitors, and 215 cameras, making the displays into fragmented electronic mirrors. The result is, of course, far from invisible as this gothic-looking technology rolls around a gallery floor. (Don’t miss the video on his site.)

Invisible Sphere on Jonathan Shipper’s site
Description on Pierogi2000 (Williamsburg gallery)
via LeCOLLAGISTE VJ, excellent French-language visualist site