DIGITAL GENIE
A concept for an art piece for Frequency Festival in Lincoln. The genie is an illusion using Peppers Ghost technique to simulate a virtual reality genie. The brief was titled "Liberation" and required a response to that effect. I came up with the idea of the genie either being liberated by the user, or the user being liberated via their wishes.
The idea was to have the user interact with the genie, starting when the user opened up a laptop ( meant to represent a lamp), and then have a few generic responses to voice commands, so the user could ask for a wish to be granted. After this interaction the Genie would request to be freed by the user, creating a scenario where the user had to choose between the freedom of the genie or their own desires being fulfiled.
Initially I had the idea to use pixel art to create the genie, and then create a series of sprites to animate it. I really liked the look and style of this Genie, but it made the Genie look more like a character from a video game, and so set a different tone for the overall peice. I wanted the Genie to have a more series feel, and look less like a cartoon character.
After the pixel Genie I started to look for more influences, and think about how a computer might try to emulate a human. I thought about creating a 3D model, but the timescale didn't allow for me to learn how. So I started to think about classic film representations, as this would be an easily recognisable style for most people. The wireframe model seemed like a good fit for the project, and would be easily recognised as a computer program emulating a human.
The final character design of the genie. I was inspired by the old fortune telling robots, like "Zoltar" from the movie "Big".
SketchUp concept of all the materials required and the size of the installation
A video made in SketchUp of the concept and the materials required.
