Via: Nxt

Nxt x Weekly Nerd

Laurens Duin | May 2023

This week, I visited the Nxt museum in Amsterdam for the first time. The Nxt is a media museum which "challenges assumptions and open minds." A lot of exhibitions are in some way interactive. Some interactions are very explicit, for example by using a controller you move a character through a surreal level based on heaven / hell. Other interactions are more implicit, for example walking by a sensor to add a filter to a video of the room.

The exhibition that spoke to me the most is "Foreign Nature" by Julius Horsthuis. This exhibit features a large room where very trippy / cool videos are projected on the walls and floor. To the side of the room, were benches from where you could observe the room in full. The room was otherwise dark, so my full attention was on the videos. This made the room feel very surreal. The videos were very trippy, it kind of felt like a fever dream.

panaroma picture of Foreign Nature — Panaroma picture of the "Foreign Nature" room

Technical analysis

As I was watching these surreal images flicker before my eyes, I wondered how this was even possible and how the images flowed into each other so smoothly. Upon looking at the ceiling, I realized this was simply done with one or multiple projectors. The reason I say one or multiple is because it wasn't entirely clear to me if some of the devices on the ceiling were just lights or projectors. At the very least, there's one big central projector which is responsible for projecting the images onto the floor. The smaller projectors (or lights) might be responsible for projecting the images onto the walls but I wouldn't know for sure.

Now, when I sat in that room, I thought "wow someone spent a crazy amount of time modeling all this". After some research however, I found out that the video was actually generated by using code. The artist, Julius Horsthuis, is a VFX artist who uses fractals to create his art.

Fractals are fascinating mathematical objects that exhibit self-similarity at different scales. In simpler words, they have patterns that repeat themselves no matter how much you zoom in or out. Fractals are created using mathematical equations or algorithms. This is what makes fractals so interesting for 3D art. You can create a fractal and zoom in on it infinitely and you will always see new details while maintaining a level of similarity. I think this is why the video feels so surreal. It's because it's not based on anything real but rather a mathematical equation. It's like looking at a dream.

The object need not exhibit exactly the same structure at all scales, but the same “type” of structures must appear on all scales. - Parametric House

Design analysis

As mentioned before, the experience of the room was very trippy. Obviously most of this effect was due to the weird videos being projected. Something that I think also contributed to this effect was the scale of the room. The walls were quite high and the room was pretty big. This made me feel very small and insignificant. I think this is a very important aspect of the room. It makes you feel like you're in a dream. It's like you're in a dream and you're looking at the world from a third person perspective. You're not in control of anything, you're just observing.

As far as I could tell, this was one of the few rooms that wasn't interactive (at least not noticable). Of course it's possible that there were sensors that somehow made the projections interactive but if there were, it wasn't noticable. I personally think this room didn't need to be interactive though. I think Horsthuis' intention was for the viewer to just sit down and observe the room. Making the room interactive would probably take away from that experience.

another panorama picture of Foreign Nature — Another panorama because it looks so cool :0

Reflection

As much as I liked this exhibition, I wouldn't say it changed my perspective on web development. I guess this is kind of on me for choosing an exhibition that had nothing at all to do with web development (I just really liked it 😄). One thing from this exhibition I could possibly see myself using in future web development endeavors is the use of trippy weird videos. I would really need to study up on fractals and how to use them in code though :).