Mass Migrations

Mass Migrations

Inspired by intricate ornaments of Japanese fighting robots, Mass Migrations is a generative, interactive, initially VR experience, presented without a headset.

Code: Marpi
Audio: An On Bast
Documentation: Khalid Farquhar
Jewelry photography: Camille MacRae
Presented at: Next Art Night

Set up for multiplayer interaction via HTC Vive controllers, it allows players to collaboratively create giant, glittering compositions, bringing Cosimo Galluzzi's digital painting to life.

Each session begins with a procedurally generated sky and visual seed that can be extruded, extended, and augmented with the controllers. Using their controllers, players are able to paint in 3D space, with a different brush shape and color appearing with each trigger press.

Gestures are automatically mirrored, so a symmetrical image emerges, like the face of a Rorschach inkblot. Working side by side, players create enormous and complex mecha sculptures, strung together in rippling shapes that could be three-dimensional calligraphic flourishes, crystalline beads, or robotic vertebrae.

Mass Migrations

The project started as a website allowing anyone to design their own creature with a mouse, trackpad, or inside WebVR, play down a custom animation of their design with music, or browse an infinite gallery of objects generated on the fly.

Each mecha created, whether from an exhibition or via the website, can be saved as a 3D object and further altered, explored or printed in high quality gold, silver bronze and steel, using services like Shapeways.

Mass Migrations was originally presented at 3DWebFest in San Francisco, California, in June 2016, with it's art installation premiere at Next Art Night in Los Angeles, California, in September 2016.