The Last Ocean by Jen Lewin Studio
The Last Ocean is an interactive light installation designed and fabricated by Jen Lewin Studio. This piece deals with the “urgent issue of plastic pollution in our oceans, a warming planet, the depletion of natural resources, and the pressing need for transformative systemic change”. The large tiles are interactive: they change color when stepped on and they communicate with their tile neighbors. The tile tops are also made of reclaimed ocean plastic. This piece made its debut at Burning Man in 2022 and is now a travelling installation.
The Last Ocean at Burning Man in 2022, Jen Lewin Studio
The Last Ocean at Canal Convergence in 2022, Jen Lewin Studio
Lobby LEDs
So Aaron created this super smart setup in the lobby with a computer, DMX controller, power supply, LED matrix and LED strips. There’s also a web cam so that we can do work in MadMapper and we can see the screens update remotely! Yeehaw!
First I created a web TeamViewer account. I clicked “Join a session”, then “Create a session”, and then “Connect to a TeamViewer ID”. I joined by using an ID and password Aaron set up already.
I’m in!
Working in MadMapper was kind of hard for me because I’ve never used it before and the main focus of the class wasn’t learning the software, so I kind of pieced together a sequence by watching some tutorials and talking to Abby… but I definitely don’t really know how to use it still.
I created a new project and the first thing I tried out was checking this box “Test Pattern” which changed the output of MadMapper and I could see that the screen changed as well. Next I got stock video from pexels.com and imported it to MadMapper. I created some quads and scenes and assigned the clips to them. Believe it or not this was kind of tricky. I’m still unsure what the correct work flow is for that part but you definitely need to right click and “Update Scene” for changes to take effect. You can resize them and they need to be moved to the top left corner (0, 0) of the output view to show up on the LED display. You can also pause and play sequences using the play button on the bottom of the window.
There’s another weird thing I don’t understand, but sometimes you can’t see the video sequence on the LED wall so “Output > “Full Screen Mode” sometimes fixes it! Also, I was curious about all the DMX settings and IP address stuff we learned about in class and that can be found under “Tools” > “Preferences” on a PC. Below is a really simple sequence I put together.
Sequence set up in MadMapper software