The Riverside

Title: The Riverside

Sub: What if we embed a river through the Great wall to the Thames River?


The new media art has broken through the original space-time view of conventional artistic creation, while different cultures were shuttling, encountering, rejecting, permeating and merging with each other among the “wormholes” brought by the "broken" space-time. My project proceeding from individual cultural identity, presents two rivers which from two location with the underlying narratives through the virtual generated animation extracted from the Real-time data source and attempts to capture the “culture wormholes” in the context of new media era.

The piece was created using a combination of fluid simulation, real-time motion graphics and projection mapping.  Fluid simulation was created in Houdini, based on a 3D scan of the real riverbed.  This was then exported as layers of particles and geometry into vvvv and rendered in real-time using various motion graphics techniques.  The sculpture was mapped using 6 HD projectors. 

The projection mapping technique employed a Brightness Accumulation Map to achieve even coverage and complex edge blending for shadow filling.  The map was created using proprietary tools built using the RULR toolkit.  The map was imported into vvvv and applied to the 6 projector outputs.  Parameters in the system were controlled by a clock allowing the piece to change in real-time according to the position of the sun and moon in Beijing.Thus, the natural state of the east 8 time zone is experienced in the zero time zone.

Walking along the riverside , we recalibrate where our natural culture comes and goes, and feel the turbulent data
flows in between.