Month: July 2021

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GDC: Storytelling Siblings

Hi everybody. If you’re attending GDC this week please join Adam Bezark, Lex Rhodes, and me for our Game Narrative Summit talk, Storytelling Siblings: The Kindred Connection between Games and Theme Parks. We start at 14:40 PDT on Tuesday July 20th and we’ll be in the chat for live Q&A. Hope to see you there!

https://schedule.gdconf.com/session/game-narrative-summit-storytelling-siblings-the-kindred-connection-between-games-and-theme-parks/879502

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Seconds to Last

A photo of Cynthia Minet discussing her sculpture "Seconds to Last" to a group of gallery visitors
A photo of the rhino sculpture fully lit from within.
A photo of the rhino sculpture lit from within half way through the lighting sequence.
A photo of the rhino sculpture with its internal lights off.

In a departure from previous materials, Cynthia Minet used discarded tents to create this life size representation of the nearly extinct Northern White Rhinoceros. In this installation, Seconds to Last, Cynthia wanted to use light to convey the disappearance of these huge beasts.

Due to the volume of the sculpture and in an attempt to avoid hot spots I used LIFX smart bulbs, 7 of them whose colors reference the seven energy chakras, to provide the internal lighting. To program the sequence of the bulbs fading off I installed Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi and set this up like a typical smart home automation. This allowed us to easily program a time of day sequence and let it run during gallery hours but turn off for the night.

A photo of the clay model for the rhino in the foreground and the finished piece in the background
The clay model that Cynthia made with the finished sculpture in the background

Visit Cynthia’s Seconds to Last page for a full description of the work.