Category Archives: Experiments

Experiments

Get User Voice – Full code

This is the code used in the final version of Get User Voice that was presented as part of Tentacular Voice: A Solo Exhibition. Utilising JavaScript to create an interactivity between the frequency value from a computer’s internal microphone and the rotation of a .obj file. Also incorporated is an exported layered animation from Blender that is triggered using the keyboard keys F, G and H.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Animation Reaction to Audio Frequency of Mic Audio 1</title>

<style>
body{margin: 0;padding: 0; background: #000;}
canvas{display: block;}
a{
color: #0080ff;
}

.info{
color: #fff;
text-align: center;
position: absolute;
top: 0;
box-sizing: border-box;
width: 100%;
padding: 5px;
}
</style>

<script src=”three.js-master/build/three.js”></script>

<script src=”three.js-master/examples/js/loaders/OBJLoader.js”></script>

</head>

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Experiments

Plastic Tentacles

In exploring the plasticity of the body the physical use of plastics became an interesting route to experiment with as a material. The voice itself is fleshy, viscous, it stretches outwards, it’s textured by the body, it has an elasticity that can take and give shape. Plastic and especially silicone has the ability to communicate these characteristics and here I have experimented in the creation of a tentacle in silicone. To begin I made a mould by using a modelling balloon as a base and copying this shape in paper mache, then the silicone was poured into this mould to form the main structure of the tentacle. For the suckers I created barriers out of modelling clay to pour silicone into that then adhered to the silicone of the main structure. Finally silicone was poured from the tip to drip down over the structure in layers of gradiented colours. Altogether this created a sculpture that was horrific in its viscosity and makes you feel slightly uncomfortable. The colours used (red, yellow, flesh and white) are mixed in different ways to created the different fleshy tones found both inside and outside the body.

I hope to produce four silicone tentacles that can be incorporated with the 3D printed sculpture as a central focal point to the body of work.

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Experiments

3D Printed Synthetic Human

As an exploration into the plasticity of the body the creation of a 3D printed sculpture, showing the intensity of the voice as a physical and horrific stress by re-imagining it as a force that moves outwards searching for input from its environment, effectively takes this translation from flesh to plastic. The 3D printed sculpture is of a previous experiment to imagine this intensity by focusing in on the mouth and transforming the tongue, teeth, oral cavity into that of a tentacle reaching out in order to bring the body into the world. By printing this in clear it reduces the body and the voice down to the same level, allowing them to exist without the textures that would normally define them. The scale compared to previous 3D printing experiments is exaggerated, previously this has been to a 1:1 scale with the human face but for this sculpture the scale was increased to further communicate the translation away from the human and towards the synthetic. To print the sculpture at this side meant splitting it into sections, the mouth was printed first and then the tentacle in two parts. The second tentacle that wraps around the front of the face is still being printed after a couple of attempts didn’t work properly. This again will be printed in parts and then assembled around the main structure of the mouth.

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Experiments

3D Animation Edit

As a continuation of the experiments in physics simulations and an accompanying piece to a full 3D printed sculpture I created a short edit of an animation using the face and tentacles wrapping round, the face and tentacles linked through the mouth, a tentacle on its own and one with the chain wrapped round. This animation places the camera in the centre with the objects positioned in a circle around it. The camera then utilities close up shots to show you pieces of the object building up through the animation, giving you a framed section out of context and asking you to fill in the blanks. This when placed with the full 3D printed sculpture allows you to go from one to the other to see the full object and explore it from different angles.

The next step with this is to potentially incorporate sound based on the human voice, this will need to sound viscous and fleshy, distorted in a way you encounter it as a substance rather than an object.

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Experiments

JavaScript Blender Animation – Mic Input

As part of the next stage in my experiments in JavaScript was to attempt to connect the microphone frequency interaction with the blender animation, originally I had wanted the animation to be triggered by the microphone frequency and after multiple tries at coding this I unfortunately could not figure out how to call the animation based on the frequency value and then render both this and the interaction together. I will continue to look into how this could be connected, but in the meantime I managed to combine both aspects separately. For this I included the microphone interaction of the rotation of the mouth depending on the frequency value with the playing of the different blender animation states. To refine this I kept just the one mouth and split this into two parts that can be rotated separately to give the effect of the mouth moving and attempting to speak. I assigned each part a separate frequency value to trigger its movement, the top part reacts to the mid-range while the bottom the low frequencies. This results in a mouth movement which is quite natural with the bottom jittering much more like its chattering on a low murmur. Coupled with the blender animation the final effect gives the sense of the intensity of the voice (the tentacle) wrapping round and attempting to stop the mouth (the body) from extending itself into the world.

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Experiments

JavaScript Blender Animation – Multiple

As a next experiment in using Blender animations in JavaScript was to export two levels of animations that can then be switched between through the inclusion of buttons and call actions. Initially I needed to first learn how to set up multiple levels of animations in Blender, achieved through using the dope sheet and the action editor. I created an animation for the wrapping of the tentacle around the mouth and then another that was the tentacle undulating poised for action. Then in JavaScript this meant setting up the two levels with the animation to play on load of the page referred to as [0] and the other as [1], with a crossfade between the two to give a smooth transition.

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Experiments

JavaScript Blender Animation – Materials

Further initial experiments with importing a blender armature animation into JavaScript, this time looking at materials and the inclusion of the mouth. The mouth was loaded just as an obj, but interestingly as the tentacle keeps its 3D space you can position the mouth within it. This gives the effect of the tentacle wrapping around the mouth to mimic that which I have experimenting with in the physical output.

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Experiments

JavaScript Blender Animation

As part of the JavaScript output to my project I wanted to incorporate animation within the reaction to mic frequency input. To begin experimentation with this I first needed to figure out how to import a Blender animation using an armature to a three.js scene. This involved loading the addon for Blender that allows you to export it as a .json file, which you then load into JavaScript and play the animation embedded within. Initially this proved difficult to even display the animation and then the test became getting it to display correctly (the exporter has a habit of distorting the object and flips the directions). I finally managed to get this to load and play using a simple animation of a tentacle curling up, this looks really effective but the next test becomes more complex animations and then assigning these to triggers.

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Experiments

Synthetic Voice – Chain Exploration 1

Taking the notion of restrictions and the creation of tension between the voice and the body I explored another object of restriction in the form of a chain. This again incorporated with the mouth to show this physical tension and textured in fleshy colours to create a contrast between the cold, hard effect of the object and the soft, malleable biological voice. Whilst this does work to show restriction, the fact that by its intrinsic nature a chain is metallic and therefore a solid object goes against the idea of the plasticity of the body. Even when textured as such it still doesn’t reflect something that should be wet, viscous and fleshy.

However when we combine the chain with the tentacle you can view this as a layering of the voice and the body, the hard chain evokes the skeleton or teeth and the fleshy tentacle evokes the tongue. Constricted together we can breakdown the form of the human and re-form it and the voice with the synthetic to develop a device that shows the intensity of a fleshy plasticity equally viscous and horrific.

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Experiments

Synthetic Voice – Tentacular Exploration 4

Linking back to an experiment produced as part of Project 2 I explored the use of physics simulation in Blender in order to animate the mouths and tentacles. The three experiments here give the tentacles the materiality of rubber, of a plasticity to be shaped, and the mouths retain the effect of a hard shell. Then different ways the rubber tentacles can be manipulated or manipulate the hard shell of the mouth are explored through dropping a tentacle onto the mouth, the tentacles within the mouth falling but the mouth remaining static and both the tentacles and mouth falling simultaneously. Each of these affect each other in different ways and produce some interesting results, mostly the fragility of the rubber material of the tentacles is exposed as no match to the hard shell of the mouth. The rubber still retains a sense of viscosity, continuing to stick to the face even under serious deformations. Viewed from the perspective of the voice you can begin to see the mouth being a harsh exterior, cutting up the voice and causing a rift in its intensity.

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