Flow - Exploring Netherlandish Art
Client: The Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston
Studio: Bluecadet
Role: Lead Software Developer
The Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston is known worldwide for its expansive and legendary collection of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish masterworks. As visitors enter the MFA’s Netherlandish art galleries, they encounter Flow, an immersive, interactive entry experience. This room-scale installation pairs landscapes with soundscapes, using camera sensing and projections to dynamically reveal layers of content as visitors draw near.
The movement of museum visitors is monitored using an Intel RealSense camera (top-down angle) , with the captured data processed through a custom application developed in openFrameworks. The blob detection information is then transmitted to TouchDesigner, where it facilitates the real-time deployment of both visual and audio content.
Three designated points serve as interactive Call-to-Action (CTA) locations, where visitors can access information about the Dutch Section artwork. As visitors approach these spots, they trigger the experience, which unfolds across three distinct scenes: Water, Hubs, and Journeys. Each interaction presents unique content relevant to the current scene, enriching the visitor's experience with context-specific details.
As visitors navigate the space, their movement induces a subtle tessellation effect on the canvas, dynamically generated by a fluid simulation. A meridian-based geometric structure was used to generate a custom UV map representing a meridian map. This UV map was then applied to all dynamic animations(revealing shapes and fluid simulation), allowing motion to respond to the map’s tessellation. The result was a more cohesive interaction between the visitor’s movements and the narrative conveyed through the installation.
A custom tool was developed in TouchDesigner to generate reveal shapes, based on the tessellated UV map, that animate in and out in real time. These procedurally created shapes were combined with preloaded assets to dynamically unveil content to visitors during the interaction.
Visitor movement triggered a fluid simulation that generated tessellated, crystalline visual effects. The screenshot below demonstrates the simulation being activated using mouse input as a proxy for real-time motion tracking.
