The concept for this study began when I was making props for a music video where we had a 2800fps camera shooting scenes of absolute destruction - pouring blood over and setting fire to props that took me days to make. The footage was absolutely compelling, and spoke of the irreversible nature of cause and effect, parodied by Barbies. I triangulated (using a Delauney algorithm) randomly-placed points across the video and masked them out to play back with different delays. Although simple I think it was a really effective translation from the raw material, emphasising the temporality and transience of the perfect Barbie scene.
The physical artefact came from my handling of a mold-making material called Composimold. I initially set out to 3D print models out of several materials, melting/removing/manipulating parts of them to show fracturing akin to my virtual artefact. Being unable to source a 3D model I was happy with, I decided to cast a real Barbie myself and make reproductions out of a material I could manipulate - wax. My reusable mold-making material liquifies when heated though, so I found that the very action of making a copy out of hot wax reshaped the mold. This was a fascinating discovery and thus my artefact became the iterative destruction of the mold as it was used.
To compile it needs to be inside the myApps folder of your openFrameworks installation. Built with MS Visual Studio but can be replicated in a fresh XCode project (created by the project generator, including the ofxDelauney addon) by copying the src folder.
Footage from the music video for Intertwined by dodie, with permission of Director Sammy Paul and Art Director Guy Larsen.
Physical artefacts made from wax, resin, using Composimold.