Tag Archives: Gardens

The Geranium Project (R&D) 22

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After a desultory effort at last weeks blog due to a truncated week this week was better focused and, eventually, more productive.

This is a better photograph of the drawing begun last week, I’m hoping to be able to interpret this into a 3d model for the hedges in one of the garden versions. The main thrust of the week was developing the interior of the installation upstairs while preparing for an event in mid December where the new installation and the VR need to be presented.

I spent Monday doing some work on the drawing and installing the projector for the new installation. I’ve raised the height to limit the shadows now that I’m not having the revealed texts, and need to limit the width of the projection to the eight foot square backcloth that you will be able to walk through. Doing this on a shoestring means that I’ve used a drip cover I had as the projection screen, after testing I’ve had to paint the centre of it white so that the video shows up better. The next stage is to limit the space, making the environment more oppresive and confining. This will limit the audience to two or three at a time, but that will (may) allow for the ‘player’ to leave the installation and enter the VR world.

Alongside this we had a heavy frost on Tuesday so I took the opportunity to photgraph the garden and on Wednesday I adjusted the VR to make the frost garden. The two pictures below show scenes from within the ‘frost garden’ in VR.

colour adjusted garden

Frost Garden in VR (the ground is icy now)

On Friday I worked on the installation, using the ‘Snow Line’ scultpure to build up one side of the installation.

Composite views of the new installation

Lit view of the new installation

Lit view of the new installation

The installation is taking shape now and I’ve created a couple of niches where some interactive elements will be installed – I need to introduce some lighting and at a low level and the sound needs significant work.

The Geranium Project (R&D) 20

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The video shows the work I did on the virtual environment last week. I reordered the layout of the gardens and made a pathway from one drawn garden to the other. I altered the 3d model of the new garden, with the splashes, to use high poly models in unity for a better finish. It still needs work and more coherence. I’m thinking now of having alternative routes through the space and denying the ability to return.

building the new installation

This is Monday morning’s work on the new installation set up. By the end of the day all the panels are up, the next stage is to paint it all and attach the screen to the bar at the back. The idea is that the viewer enters the space, explores the alcoves (which will be sculptural) with the video projected to the back as before, and can then leave the space through the video, replicating the experience in the VR world. I’m also building a model of the studio so that is the space you begin in and then you view the installation in VR as in life but passing through the video takes you to the new spaces.

On Thursday I painted the new installation with an undercoat and worked on the VR world, but only after bailing out the buckets on the top floors.

I tried out making a photographic garden with all the planes mapped as videos, I don’t have the processing power.

I had to remove the videos because of the continuous glitching.

After Thursday the VR space looks like this…

The positive thing about the experience on Thursday is that it helped me resolve an idea for the arrangement of the gardens. I’m now thinking of four gardens, possibly arranged seasonally, which gives me a target for the modelling and textures I need to make.

The Geranium Project (R&D) 18

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Student feedback on geranium – aesthetic

Still considering the feedback from the open night and the first group of students. At the same time I need to keep working on the things I know I want to achieve with the space.

I’ve noted before that the difficulty is to keep in mind the developments I want while taking on board advice and comment, especially about the experience of using the space.

Student feedback on geranium – technical

There are not really any comments on the technical aspect of the space, barring things I already noted myself. The sound needs a lot of work and the experience would be more comfortable with a wireless headset.

When the students were around last Wednesday a few of them broke a maquette so I’ve had to repair it. I left it until Monday after cleaning the joints. I’ll have to finish it on Friday.

broken maquette

repaired maquette

I also worked on the next iteration of the garden, the new ‘trees’ from the splashes work ok and will probably withstand much more detail and a better material finish.

The next phase, after the group of students on Wednesday is making some new materials from the drawings. I will also make some short video clips to try out the video garden.

On Wednesday I had the final group of students around to the studio, they once again confirmed the feelings of each group that has visited the space. The main thing I take from this is that nobody wants to criticise and people are basically nice.

Last group of students visit the studio

There were a few more comments placed on the board that confirmed the things written above them and spoke very positively of the experience.

I got another video that indicates that as the file size rises the space tends to glitch a bit more, I need to find out if this changes when I ‘build’ the space as an executable file.

It also gives a first view of the new space, in this case added as a ‘next door’ to the drawn garden.

Having got the visits out of the way I’m able to move forward with the things they highlighted, firstly I need to revisit the installation, reorganising it to make the space more enclosed and changing the interior to reflect the VR space more obviously.

new installation layout

I started to play around with arrangement of the space that can provide the more claustrophobic feel.