Resortes

Continuó bajo otras formas, encadenándose eslabón por eslabón. No perdonando ningún vacío, convirtiendo cada eventual vacío en el punto nodal de todas las fuerzas contrarias en tensión.

Osvaldo Lamborghini

Resortes is an interactive installation manipulated in real-time through the hand gestures of participants. In this installation, Newton’s laws of motion of which we find in our day to day life, is simulated to recreate various elastic strings from a set of particles or nodes.The strings act independently from each other and they are triggered either by the hand gestures of each participant or by real-time audio analysis.

In this installation two Leap Motions were used, they were located at the start and at the end of the projection. Each sensor affects differently the musical composition to produce self-rhythms and organic results. At the same time the hand movement can alter the physics of the chords, analogous to manipulating a elastic string with your bare hands. When the two Leap Motions are working simultaneously, both visual and sounds generated from each sensor are combined into one composition.

The piece is divided into two stages: the interactive and the generative. If the Leap Motion Controller can’t detect any gestures, then there is no activation of the visuals or sound – only silence. However, when either one of the devices detects a gesture, a sound explosion is triggered, and the installation springs to life.

During the interactive stage, visitors can manipulate the audio synths and the physics of the responsive visuals. When the user’s hand disappears, another sound explosion takes place, and the generative stage begins. This involves an audio-visual experience that can last between 6 and 8 minutes, depending on various feedback values from the interactive process.

Hand Gestures

To create Resortes, we set up a local network where four computers were connected simultaneously. There was a constant flow of information between the various applications. To create the visuals, we used Processing 2.0 with OpenGL, GLSL, and libraries like oscP5 and the Leap Motion library for Processing.

The audio was made using SuperCollider and an open-source library called MIDetectorOSC, which sends musical information to other applications via OSC messages. This is very useful to allow perfect real-time synchronization between audio and video. Finally, we used VVVV to control the lighting system, and two computers were used to activate both Leap Motion Controllers and share information. Here’s a breakdown of the setup:

Connections of the local network and the Information flow Diagram

With Resortes, we wanted the audience to feel that they could control a string with their bare hands and manipulate the physics of the environment. With the Leap Motion Controller, we were able to create a different form of expression that wouldn’t have been otherwise possible.

Visuals and Interaction
Thomas Sanchez Lengeling
Audio
Alejandro Franco Briones

Lights
Salvador Chávez
Camera
Edgardo Dander
Illustration
Ana Karen G Barajas
Photography
Francisco Venezuela Kat

The installation took place at the Digital Cultural Center (Centro de Cultura Digital CCD) in Mexico City on the first week of October of 2013 in the Mutek Festival Mexico 2013 and was produced by COCOLAB.

Resortes on the Developers blog of Leap Motion.