An extension of Mirage, re-work of The Scream, “Miream” is exhibited at Playful Media this year (2009).
I get Miream re-constructed in PhotoSynth too!
Playful Media is just over. Our team members were staying in the exhibition area explaining the art work. We’ve heard a lot of comments from visitors, mostly positive, some negative, which are all appreciated by us since we enjoy communicating with visitors face-to-face.
If you’ve missed the showcase, and want to know more about Miream, here I’ll try explaining to you.
Official project description
It’s a bit long, but really informative:
“Miream” is an excursion of artistic and technological collaborations crystallized in form of an installation. The title is an amalgamation of two words: “Mirror” and “Scream”.
This work is an inventive attempt to create a magical transformation from 2D image to 3D installation. The core of the installation is a vertical grid which holds drips of hanging metal ball chains with different lengths. A mirror is installed below the hanging metal ball chains. By applying reversal effect being viewed from the mirror, the result is a 3-dimensional interpretation of the acclaimed painting “The Scream” (1893) by Norwegians expressionist artist, Edvard Munch. The Hanging metal ball chains can also generate trembling motions which intensifies an immersive experience for audience.
The creative process starts with studying the visual elements of the painting (twilight sky, bridge, scream head, etc.) and analyses the image’s composition (curves, depth and perspectives) in relations to the anguish and fearful emotional expressions. With aids from precious computation, the painting was translated into 3D pixels then later replaced with 3mm metal balls. Lengths and placement of each metal ball chains were preciously calculated by computer. More than 2000 yards of metal chains were used to transform an image into this captivating 3D entity.
It is very intuitive and even meditative for all team members during the process of putting links and links of metal balls together in order to unveil the three-dimensional representation of both the visual landscape and inner emotions of this illustrious painting.
How did the idea come?
Well, actually this is the extension of another installation we made last year (2008), “Mirage”. “Mirage” is using the same technique, hanging up metal chains and using mirror to reflect the 3D structure. What we created in “Mirage” is a city, so there were basically buildings formed by the chains.
“Miream” extending “Mirage” in several dimensions: physical size, chain intensity, content meaning, technical challenge, budget and team size.
Miream’s topic is aiming to effectively using the properties of metal chains. That is, because of its weight, when the chains are hanged up and grouped together, the overall motion is very elastic and able to express a strong emotion (similar to audience wave). That’s the point why we choose the painting “The Scream”. “The Scream” is a famous piece of expressionism, which is usually distorting reality for an emotional effect (oh ya, you shake the chains to get the emotion for our case).
What if the visitors are not able to relate it to “The Scream” when they see it?
First of all, we’re re-creating “The Scream” in a different way, so visitors need to know “The Scream” in order to appreciate it. If the visitors do not know the original painting, definitely this art work has no meaning to them. But “The Scream” is so famous that at least most Hong Kong people know it.
Secondly, we’re not cloning “The Scream”, we’re expressing the emotion in a different way which is even in a higher level. Just like other kinds of abstract art, focusing on meaning and feeling but not real-world structure and perspective.
Thirdly, this is the first time we choose this kind of “3D reconstruction” topic which is very challenging. We do not have that large budget to make a large enough piece to re-create all the details in the painting. So the resulting picture is quite “low-res” but we think it is acceptable since our focus is emotion and meaning.
What is the software used?
To create a depth map, we used 3ds Max and PhotoShop with our artistic sense. For converting the depth map into 3D model and calculating each length of chain (exporting to a csv file, which can be opened in Excel), I wrote a program in Flash to do so.
The custom made program can be found here. It is really not user-friendly and buggy since it was made for ourselves only. But you can still play with it as long as you are not using for commercial propose (and I have not removed it yet :P).
If you’re a Flash developer, you may noticed that the program is very similar to the Alchemy particle pusher. In fact, I used Joa Eberts AS3 only version as a base and altered it as I need to overcome the limit of int.
How many metal chains are there?
The resolution is 133x177. So, approximately there are >20,000 metal chains.
Where are the photo, video or other documentary?
We are organizing them. There will be a website dedicated for “The mirage series” (in weeks, hopefully). The URL will be announced in this blog. Or you can email me: andy@onthewings.net.