Below text from Electronic Countermeasures, LLC website –
Fountainhead is an interactive sculpture by Charles Long that transforms the public fountain into a mesmerizing interactive monument with the expertise of the creative coding and video design team at Electronic Countermeasures, LLC. Commissioned for the Nasher Sculpture Center’s tenth anniversary Nasher XChange exhibition, the sculpture gives the functions of a modern fountain a digital makeover, replacing water with a flowing field of one dollar bill particles that are projected onto the three faces of the 16 foot tall sculpture standing in Dallas’ NorthPark Center mall. Visitors interact with the sculpture by tossing a virtual coin into the fountain after donating to one of three local Dallas Charities via a custom iOS application also written by Electronic Countermeasures. Each coin tossed into the Fountainhead greets the user with a flying virtual coin that lands on the sculptures surface triggering an exuberant animated splash of money accompanied by a whimsical musical splash from an array of nine speakers.
The Open Source programming language, Processing, forms the backbone of the animation and control system for the piece. Constantly shifting flow fields direct a system of 1,200 one-dollar bill particles over the contours of each face of the sculptural form creating an ever-changing water-like motion. Processing also handles the audio playback and receives OSC messages sent from the iPad kiosks to trigger splashes when a user makes a donation. The iPad donation kiosk app utilizes the PayAnywhere iOS SDK and credit card swipe hardware for processing payments to the charities. The sculpture is spray coated in Screen Goo to increase visibility within the high ambient light environment of the mall.
Fountainhead is on display at the NorthPark Center in Dallas until March 31st, 2014.
“The goo worked really well, providing both a clean, luminous surface for the sculpture as a form and giving us an extra boost for projectors that were barely bright enough for the level of ambient light. I look forward to using goo systems on future artistic projection applications.”
Kerstin Hovland
Electronic Countermeasures, LLC
