Kanchenjunga is a porthole window to a physical world of airplanes, lights and creatures suspended in front of a screen. On screen above the mountains are airplanes, below the mountains are submarines, both created generated in Processing. Below the diorama is a wooden box. On the top of the box is a ring of old style metal toggle switches and knobs inviting the user to enjoy some wiggling and toggling. Some of the switches turn lights on and off, affecting the view, revealing different parts of the landscape: layers of wooden mountains, drawings, and a critter or two. One switch turns on snow. Some of the switches affect the airplane and submarine animations. The airplanes traverse the screen above the mountains, when you hit a switch, they curl up their wings and roll into little balls and twirl across screen. The submarines traverse the screen below the mountains, when a different is activated, they transform into aquatic creatures and continue their trajectory. And the knobs control servo motors, with wooden cutout creatures that rotate in and out of view behind, below and above the mountains. Kanchenjunga is a travelogue diorama, a porthole for people to play with an odd little world.
My work before ITP combined painting, drawing, photography, stop-motion and computer animation to build conveyor-belt expeditions, creating informal narratives traveling through aerial, arboreal and aquatic worlds of curious perspective. Kanchenjunga explores the additional elements of physical depth, electronics, lights, motors and interaction to these worlds.