The speed is fun to everyone. The speed can give us unusual experience
for percepting the world. It is a distorted view of the world. In a
situation of high speed driving, the view of an automobile driver is
distorted, but his final perception is revised by our brain program to
the normal view. The fun of high speed driving is caused by affecting
to generate some endorphin in our brain for keeping up the process of
revising distortion.
The aim of producing this art piece is to develop special algorithm to
distort the view of the viewer, instead of viewing actual view in
front of him. The algorithm abducts the process which our brains are
processing normally in the situation of accelerating the speed. It
will be a visualization of the impression of speed.
The formar research was done in 1992, which was titled "Impressing
Velocity", a famous modern technology "GPS" (global positioning
system) was used with laptop computer for collecting 3 dimentional
data path which was generated corresponding to our climbing up and
down Mt.Fuji. These 3 dimentional data were used to calculate the
velocity in each part of the path and corresponding to the velocity
data, the form of a cross-section of the Mt.Fuji was distorted. High
velocity will shrink that cross-section data, and in the other hand,
low velocity will expand the form of that section, because low
velocity shows that the person is tired. The state of zero velocity,
when we have a rest, will make an explosional form of Mt.Fuji (see
figure 1.) This image could not be generated in realtime in 1992.
Figure 1.
Deformed result from Impressing Velocity in 1994. Top: deformation was
done referring to the data of climbing up. Bottom: referring data of
going down.
Figure 2. Deformed images of Roller Coaster, captured from the video tape.
The algorithm of distortion:
The image which is captured by the CCD camera mounted on the car, is
mapped onto the virtual screen in computer space, which is Bi-cubic
spline curved flexible surface, and this screen is distorted according
to the data which is grabbed by the accelerometer which was also
mounted on the car. This virtual screen will be rendered with 2 view
points to generate stereo scopic capability. The viewer will see
fully 3 dimentionally distorted screen where the captured image is
mapped on. The basic algorithm for distorting the screen is: when the
driver accelerate the speed, the center of the screen will come toward
the driver, when he turns to the right, the center of the screen will
be stretched to the left. And more, corresponding the brightness or
some other factors, the surface of the screen will be embossed or grew
up.
This algorithm will be developed to affect as impressing the
velocity. The distortion is a kind of deformation of the
form. Traditionally the deformation is an important factor of the
expression of the art. The certain factor of deformation will control
the impression of the viewer. This is not the way of solving the
problems in science, but the way of the art.
Figure 3.
An example plan for the Phase 1 installation.
Masaki Fujihata
at C3, Budapest
36-1-214-6856
36-1-214-6872 fax
direct e-mail: masaki@c3.hu
C3 HomePage is: http://www.c3.hu/ Masaki's HomePage is: http://www.flab.mag.keio.ac.jp/