~4 min videoDoc ~22 min video excerpt/test summer 2011
Short Description: Mrs. Squandertime lives in a virtual home in real time. She wanders into her living room with a cup of tea, sits, and watches the world go by. Through her large picture window she contemplates boats on the river, the sea, clouds, gulls flying, a ferry passing, the tide going in and out, people on the sea wall. Mrs. Squandertime is part of the slow movement; an invitation to anyone who visits to sit awhile, stay quiet, and contemplate the view. (ongoing)
"Mrs. Squandertime," is a real-time simulation of a virtual character, her living room, and the view from her window. This large, projected, persistent simulation is based on a real location. The component images for the seascape are drawn from historical printed sources; their assembly and animation driven by real-time weather, time and tide data. Mrs. Squandertime is rendered photographically in a series of slowly dissolving still images which correspond to her current behavior.
We prototyped a first version of the project, not attached to a data stream in 2009 (see below). Since then we have reshot the Mrs. Squandertime images, with a better model; and reworked the 3D representation of the simulation. We are still working on the heuristics and algorithms, dependent on weather, time and tide data, that dictate the appearance of people, boats, animals in the simulation; and on the visual manifestations of those elements.
Mrs. Squandertime's behavior depends on her schedule as well as her response to her view. We are also working on a stream-of-consciousness thought process for her, that will comment on what she sees, as well as musing on other topics. Eventually we would like her to be interactive and able to answer questions. "What are you doing, Mrs. Squandertime?" "Oh, I'm just watching that flock of Brent geese."
The present plan is to break the project into three stages:
- Mrs. Squandertime, real-time data driven simulation (2011)
- Mrs. Squandertime with stream of consciousness
- Mrs. Squandertime interactive
Links
Collaborators: Josephine Anstey, Dave Pape, Intermedia Performance Studio
Soft/Hardware: Python, c++, custom software, projector
Related Shows:
- FILE Media Art, FILE RIO 2012, Art Galery of Oi Futuro - Flamengo in Rio de Janeiro city, Brazil, March 12th- April 8th 2012.
- exhibition of 22 minute video extract
- FILE Media Art, FILE 2011, SESI' Cultural Centre, Sao Paulo, Brazil July 18th - August 21th, 2011.
- exhibition of 22 minute video extract
- Buffalo Infringement Festival @ Space 224, Allen Street, Buffalo, July 28 - August 7, 2011
- Early Beta of Version II, tied to real but recorded data
- Buffalo Infringement Festival @ Space 224, Allen Street, Buffalo July 23 - Aug 2, 2009
- We showed a test version of the project (see image below) at the 2009 Buffalo Infringement Festival. This version was not attached to any real-time data.
