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Synapses

A projection mapped work inspired by the synapsis concept and how it approaches forms of life and creation.



produced by: Petros Veloussis

Concept and background research

   In my work I wanted to depict the concept of synapsis in creating a new connection or life form, whether this might occur inside a brain, in a cell, in another synthetic, perhaps, galaxy, or in a more esoteric world, where thoughts and emotions are joined. In its broader meaning and not constrained as it is, in the neuroscientific context, synapsis describes the establishment of bidirectional communication which results in duality and thus, in birth, genesis etc. Through this, smaller clusters become systems which in turn grow in size, in a perpetual process. Moreover, reading Ernst Haeckel’s “Artforms in Nature” helped me in the visualization of the above initial concept and was a valuable inspiration.

 
Technical

The whole work lasts 140 seconds and it is divided into five scenes.

In the first scene, I was based on the bouncing balls class example, where I switched “ofClear” off to have their trails drawn on the canvas. On that, I was utilising a technique blending two colours and dynamically changing them over time. The result is ever changing colourful elements travelling around and may be seen like seeking for a possible connection/synapsis. For this instance I am using a class and an extra object , in which I created a function that can apply a timing offset and delay the beginning of the sketch start, on a particular surface. The second scene is a combination of the magnetic grid and the bouncing balls example, with some further changes. As a result the slowly moving balls cause the “magnetic” lines to repel them. From both those different movements we get a slight 3D effect, as well as an aquarium impression, where the repelling lines could be seen as the seaweed and the circles as swimming organisms. Moreover, when circles approach a certain edge of the canvas, their size is reduced, adding more depth and perspective overall. In the third scene, I used a formula which I found on an open processing example, which calculates dynamic coordinates by using sine. In this way and by switching the background update off, I had the selected shapes drawing symmetrical, spirograph like patterns, which after a lot of tweaking and experimentation gave me the desired result. This is based on Deleuze’s “orchid and wasp” metaphor and may be perceived as looking into a cell from a microscope. For this class I used six different objects in order to have variations in colour, angle and timing. The last two scenes are variations based on the above mentioned scene and portray synapses in a larger, more cosmic dimensions.

 

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Self Evaluation

   One of the things that let me down was the difference in brightness, definition and overall sharpness of my sketches on the projection mapped surfaces, compared to how it was when I was previewing them on my laptop. This resulted in pixelation and not having the same amount of detail at certain instances. What I learned, is that I should have used bigger radii on my circles, thicker width on the lines of my shapes, as well as bigger FBO size. Unfortunately, due to last minute physical shape failure, we had to reconstruct new card boxes and change the initial shape, that we also worked on during holidays. This fact took time from doing the final fine tunings and adjustments on the code, before projecting on the actual surfaces. On the other hand, this assignment was very challenging and stretched my limits and abilities in various ways. I think I gained a better understanding on the coding philosophy and the techniques  taught in the first term, in general. Moreover, I familiarised myself with writing classes and using objects, as well as the architecture of a bigger scale program.