_Alice

‘ALICE’is my computational project exploring problems to technologies’ hyper development. This project is inspired by Junichiro Tanizaki’s cultural comment regarding the influence of the West on the East. It attempts to expands on such a concept through a modern perspective, exploring how overdevelopment of technologies can destroy natural life but also create a deeper sentiment of displacement. Slowly, we become displaced by the modern world we designed for ourselves, killing natural life along the way. ALICE is a manifestation, a product of such a sentiment of displacement, of not belonging to the world we were born into.

3D Concept Renders finalises the appearance of ALICE and her home. I experimented with an extensice array of textures and visual styles, producing 4 drafts of different appearances and scenes along the way. I was inspired by the idea of broken machines, something forgotten or no longer shiny. The creation of ALICE’s world tries to contextualise her as something grounded in reality rather than fantasy, hence the final adapted scene positions ALICE’s natural habitat at a mountain top right next to a hustling city.

My second work recreates ALICE’s natural habitat in touch designer. This network creates a procedurally generated 3D environment that can be controlled with mouse. The grass can be moved by the mouse as if wind is moving it, with noise nodes driving dynamic patterns. Some blurring nodes refines the final visual. ALICE is no where seen within the scene.

This simple touch designer output is inspired by the projects of @threedashes. It uses a live video feed as primary input, and refines the image with chroma and level nodes. The process is very sensitive to light, which gives a heat-map like visualisation of light. Some experiments had been done with adjusting light sensitivity threshold. If this project is to be displayed in an exhibition setting, the threshold will have to be adjusted as appropriate. Feedback loop is also used to give a constantly evolving image.
If this artwork is developed as a second edition, kinetics may be a good integration. As the viewer walks in front of the sensor, the grass sways and paves a way, as if the viewer is walking within ALICE’s habitat. This reconstructs the perspective of the viewer as that of an ‘insect’ robot, allowing the experience of non-human perspective.