Amy's Garden

Combining a Muse brain sensing headband and saturated, animated 3D graphics, Amy’s Garden brings Amy Ferrari’s liquid, vibrating world to life.

If the viewer takes the time to cultivate optimism, they can reach out and tend the garden, without even leaving footprints.

Installation

More information appears in the installation circular.

Exhibition

Amy’s Garden appeared at the Art-Mersion exhibition of immersive media, 13-14 March 2015.

The event coincided with Ferrari’s Serene Yellow Spaces at Waterloo’s Button Factory gallery. At left, Amy’s Tawny Transference of Mojo appears.

Design

One by one or in groups, viewers place the Muse headband across their foreheads and take in the oversize Christie Digital display.

The Muse EEG sensor reads the electrical activity of mentation. It senses various mental and emotional states, and broadcasts them wirelessly to a computer host.

Software builds a mathematical model of the viewer(s). It’s a rough sketch of the viewer’s mood, their energy, and their presence of mind.

The plants and animals of the garden “perceive” this model, according to their own individual characters. The entire world of the simulation reacts as well.

A high-powered graphics processor turns the results into motion. Software manipulates the “bones” and “morph targets” of objects, and GPU shader code creates subtle visual effects.

Original software incorporates WebGL, Three.js and several Javascript frameworks.

Amy’s Garden lives within Google Chrome. It makes use of Interaxon’s SDK for analyzing Muse data.

The plants are modelled and structured in Blender 3D, or created procedurally.

Many thanks to REAP and Deep Realities for helping bring Amy’s Garden to the public in so many ways.

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Inquiries: kirk@kirk.zurell.name