Meddling at the intersection of art and technology
Anyone else going to appear as one of yourselves at Immersive X? It’s happening Nov 11-14 and the program lineup is here: https://immersive-x.de/program-immersive-x-2025
So far I plan to be in these sessions: https://immersive-x.de/attendees/veeyawn/
See you there?
Spring of 2022 I was approached to build out a system for a “digital shooting gallery.” XShot designed and built a booth that would contain two shooting galleries using their foam dart weapons.
The galleries would run simultaneously and groups in the galleries would score points for every target they hit. Scores were only kept for each group (not individuals). Outside of the galleries there was a monitor mounted above that displayed the high scores for groups that came through the galleries that day.
The two galleries had unique designs. Gallery 1 was stylized to feel roughly like an 8bit environment. The monitors were masked to give them unique shapes and the characters on the monitors were 8bit style sprites that would bounce or slide around.
Gallery 2 was designed like the back alley of a city. The targets were signs or graphics one may see in the big city.
Each gallery would take up to 4 players who could choose the style of weapon and shoot constantly for a limited time. The game was started by a host who would hit a hidden button that set the system to start after a brief countdown. Each monitor had a Raspberry Pi attached to the back of it along with a small vibration sensor. The sensor was sensitive enough to detect when the monitor was hit and register the score with a central computer running a scorekeeping app built in Unity. Each Pi was wired into the network so data was reliably sent to the computer. It would have been madness to depend on wifi on a trade show floor. The main computer was also displaying the high scores to a monitor above the booth and two monitors that players could look at upon exit from the galleries.
There were 28 Pis used across the two galleries and the game ran for 3 days, the length of VidCon 2022. Here’s a walk through of the game as it was played:
Every year a group of space enthusiasts gather to celebrate human kind’s achievments and dreams of existing as a space faring species. In honor of the first human to orbit it’s called Yuri’s Night.
“Yuri’s Night is the World Space Party. Every year on or around April 12th we celebrate all that humanity brings with us as we explore the cosmos: music, art, science, culture, and each other!”
For 2022 we were invited to projection map the SSME (Space Shuttle Main Engine) that sat in the hangar with the Endeavour orbiter. Working with Z Fame artists we created a variety of looks to play throughout the event. Some were looping environmental looks while others were audio reactive to sync with the music played by the various DJs at the party.
For the signature look for 2022 I created outlines of the various machines that had been carried to orbit by Endeavour with a squiggly outline pattern on the SSME itself. A particle cloud that danced with the music in the room filled out the background. All of the programming was done with Touch Designer which allowed us to play with the graphics live during the event. Take a look at the quick video we put together here: