Outpost Basel

Seattle based Architecture firm Olson Kundig invited Reilly Donovan and I to create an interactive, projection mapped installation within the VIP Collectors Lounge they produced for Design Miami/Basel 2015 in Basel, Switzerland. Design Miami is the sister fair of Art Basel focusing on primarily interior design, art jewelry and architecture, the exclusive lounge area serves as a resting spot for collectors attending the fair.

We arrived in Basel with a few pieces of code sketches and then worked in the environment itself for a week prior to the fair opening so that the piece could be optimized both aesthetically and technically to the temporary fabricated environment that Olson Kundig created. Before hand arrangements were made to install three projectors, driven by one CPU each, to cover three walls in the lounge to immerse visitors in generative light art. This system acted as the paint and plaster of an immersive generative mural.

Custom code written in Processing generated the brick pattern to precisely projection map the physical environment. A calibration mode brought up custom controls to set brick size and spacing in situ, along with four corner pin keystoning allowed us to accurately match the architectural surface.

Three depth cameras were also used to track general movement in the room. This tracking data was then used to subtly offset the brick mappings themselves, creating a sense, often out of the corner of one’s eye, that the walls were breathing slightly.

Each brick was coded as a discrete object in our application, an individual brick’s transparency was then governed by slightly offset LFOs, creating the cascading pattern. Additional horizontal lines constantly drifted upwards creating the gradient effect. Vertical and horizontal lines traced the surface, also coded as independent objects that controlled their own animation. The entire time scale was slowed to an architectural pace, to create a relaxing, conversational and pensive environment.