From the retrospective by Optical Animal:

“Optical Animal partnered with Bulleit Bourbon to create the Bulleit Limitless Lounge - an immersive video art experience and bar that takes guests on an inspiring journey through a series of sprawling 360° animated worlds.

The looping 25-minute narrative was scripted, designed, animated and installed by Optical Animal, venturing out on a vivid, abstract exploration into the creative process. To provide a broad range of insight and inspiration, OA brought on collaborating artists Mike Perry, boogieREZ, Kyle Gordon, and Gleix, among others. A six-channel immersive audioscape helped to drive the narrative, crafted by sound designers Philip Kim, Drew Joy, Gosteffects, and Optical Animal.

As a complement to the ultra-high resolution immersive projections of the main space, OA also created a supporting installation featuring a series of vintage 16mm projectors and physical film loops, rounding out the experience with a throwback to the analog world where it all began.”

View the Project via Optical Animal

PR Newswire • Luxury Lifestyle • TrendHunter

C/O Optical Animal for Bulleit Whiskey

Was happy to have the opportunity to put together some visual artwork for this project. All built in TouchDesigner by rigging a 5 camera scene which was projection mapped across an 18,000px+ raster with content that loops back around + the floor. First time challenge of this sort; many thanks to Max as always!

Orbitals

Ambient audiovisual installation + generative phasing musical performance tool

The Great Hall at Avant Gardner, New York City, Summer 2023

12 paths, concentric circles by default. Each contains one orbital that will trigger a note when it reaches a slot on its path. Notes can be freely assigned per path and saved as custom scales which are easy to switch between. Note triggers are sent out via MIDI for easy synth/DAW integration + orbitals can trigger unique audio files. Each path can contain one or two trigger slots. Orbitals can travel the full length of the path endlessly in a loop, or in a pendulum/sinewave with adjustable amplitude.

The more interesting behavior comes from adjusting speeds & phase. There's an overall speed parameter & a 'cascade' which offsets speed for consecutive paths in equal increments. This allows for easy creation of Reich-esque phasing pieces & 'pendulum' music. Extra adjustments for visual & aesthetic stuff as well. Slow automation of speed and key changes make this a really nice machine for endless generative ambient textures.

This project started out, as many of the better ones do, as a personal experiment (see Instagram Post), but was adapted for The Great Hall at Avant Gardner in Brooklyn, New York when I was asked to come up with an idea that might fit the lounge area of the venue space for the summer season. Throughout the months that The Brooklyn Mirage is in operation, guests come through The Great Hall on their way inside, taking in a calm and welcoming scene that waits for them to relax alongside should they tire of the dancefloor. Something pleasing and a little mesmerizing about the phase of things :) On occasion I would build out slight variations on the patch to go with the nights theme, such as redoing the paths so that they were in the shape of clouds, or the Anjunadeep logo.

Other nights I worked further on the front end UI for the patch, which allowed anybody on staff to make adjustments to color, sound, etc… with a fair degree of granularity. As this was initially meant to be a musical phasing tool, there truly is quite a lot more that this can do beyond just sitting and playing ambient triggers slightly out of phase - but this was a fantastic opportunity and a lovely way to give the loungers something to focus on during a break from the four on the floor outside.

Primary components: 2x Modded CRT TVs acting as color oscilloscopes with amplified audio piped directly into the yoke to drive deflection.

Audio is being generated inside of FL Studio's 3xOSC VST running on the Steam Deck with a MIDI controller that allows the user to additively mix between a bank of 16 different preset waveforms to build unique waveshapes via beam deflection.

The Steam Deck is also running TouchDesigner (wrapped using wine/bottles for Linux) in perform mode with a bank of 20 different color ramp presets that can be selected via touchscreen and piped directly into the composite video input of the CRT Oscilloscopes to color the waveform in various ways.

In addition to the simple audio waveforms, a small tongue drum (Idiopan), which has had each tongue tuned to resonant frequencies compatible with NTSC (multiples & harmonics of 60Hz), is being sent via contact microphone into the CRT scopes.

Instagram post here.

Other interactive components of this installation utilizing TouchDesigner for realtime pointcloud generation via Kinect Azure, interacting with reaction diffusion and feedback systems, arduino integration for 'scene' switching, basics of frame cache integration of a live video feed, etc... and some other fun stuff not shown in as much detail.

May, 2023.