Goal and people
MESH_KUNST is an audio-visual installation and a diploma project of Konstancja Pikul. The aim of our work was to present the artistic vision of Konstancja in an old porcelain factory in Katowice during an electronic music festival.
We managed to complete the project in 3 months. Konstancja Pikul was the head and main organizer of the project, I designed the project from the technical side, designed and wrote the firmware for the controller, Maciej Sabiniok transformed the vision of Konstancja’s lights projection into data understandable for the controller using his own dedicated digital signal processing software. The music was prepared by @tonallaxe & @ sylwia9_0_9, the photos were taken by Paulina Stec, and the video was edited by Artur Kuś.
Techs
The system consisted of:
- Network of projectors
- Lights and sound controller
- Programmable color light lanes
- Sound system
- Power supply network
Projectors were used for presenting the artistically transformed record of a human face. They were connected using repeaters and driven by a personal computer.
Light lanes, together with the sound system were operated by the controller that I had designed. The controller is a synchronous real-time microcontroler-based driver that reads audio and light data out from the external file storage and distribute streams respectively to the audio amplifier and light lanes in parallel.
Lanes show the play of lights. They are divided into fragments where each can be programmed independently to display any color in any order we want.
The sound system was the on-site fixed set of speaker monitors and amplifiers to which we could connect our controller.
To meet operating conditions and let lanes shine evenly, the dedicated network of power supply had to be applied.
To give a bit of details. I have used a popular developers board with a 32bit microcontroller. Entire firmware have been written in C. Multiple serial interfaces have been utilized and DAC for audio. Also, the extension board has been designed due to adaptation to light lanes’ interface and maximum utilization of serial interfaces bandwidth.
Result
Have a look on the video recorded at the festival while all our set up was performing. Hopefully, you will enjoy :). Don’t hesitate to give us feedback.
Cheers,
Maciek