UNIVERSITY PROJECT
Sillage
(see-yah-zh)
An experimental interactive piece built in TouchDesigner, combining real-time audio and video inputs to create a dynamic, responsive experience. Designed for a coding brief with only one rule, which was to incorporate two modes of user input, this project invites playful exploration as sound and movement transform the visuals in unexpected ways.
Setup
The idea was to draw inspiration from nature and create an immersive experience on the laptop, with the user inputs coming from the computer webcam and the computer microphone. The audio input would affect the speed of the visuals, and the motion tracking from the webcam would affect the direction of motion.
The Idea
The final product was an audio/motion-reactive experience, where particles inspired by bioluminescent sea-anemones move with the left-to-right hand movement of the user, and where the particles increase the speed of downward motion when blowing sounds are made at the microphone.
This gave rise to the name Sillage, which means ‘wake’—the trail left in water or the impression made in space after someone has been and gone.
DEVELOPMENT IN TOUCHDESIGNER
Playing around with different nodes and parameters to develop the base display first, then developing separate node systems for the different sensors and connecting them to the relevant parameters of the base visual, so that any change detected by the sensor affects the parameter of the visual.
Visual
PROTOTYPE
