Coincidence is an urban synchronization project that harnesses publicly accessible traffic and tourist live camera feeds from Istanbul, transforming them into living collages with multiple scenes that continuously evolve in real time. The project aims to re-synchronize the neighborhoods of Istanbul under an ongoing cultural separation because of political and ideological tension among different demographics, by merging seemingly unrelated urban structures from various districts into collages to create couplings for the audience to observe and witness manifest a unison. Observing the collaboration of different pieces from various camera streams is a complex phenomenon; however, since the collage is live, there is a small probability that the audience will observe subjectively higher-level harmonic instances that generate emotional seisms and perturbate the pitch of each piece toward unity.
Since the project utilizes real-time camera streams and is observed live by the audience, the artwork is prone to potential delays and errors, and hence it is crucial to make every process as efficient and computationally safe as possible by considering it to be a safety-critical system. To safeguard the artwork against such failures, the entire process is segmented and encapsulated into individual scripts. While these scripts interact and collaborate with one another, they also operate using parallel processing, making isolated cores work together, resulting in software and hardware level collages, paralleling the goal of harmony and amplifying the effect of manifestation.
Coincidence is an urban synchronization project that harnesses publicly accessible traffic and tourist live camera feeds from Istanbul, transforming them into living collages with multiple scenes that continuously evolve in real time. The project aims to re-synchronize the neighborhoods of Istanbul under an ongoing cultural separation because of political and ideological tension among different demographics, by merging seemingly unrelated urban structures from various districts into collages to create couplings for the audience to observe and witness manifest a unison. Observing the collaboration of different pieces from various camera streams is a complex phenomenon; however, since the collage is live, there is a small probability that the audience will observe subjectively higher-level harmonic instances that generate emotional seisms and perturbate the pitch of each piece toward unity.
Since the project utilizes real-time camera streams and is observed live by the audience, the artwork is prone to potential delays and errors, and hence it is crucial to make every process as efficient and computationally safe as possible by considering it to be a safety-critical system. To safeguard the artwork against such failures, the entire process is segmented and encapsulated into individual scripts. While these scripts interact and collaborate with one another, they also operate using parallel processing, making isolated cores work together, resulting in software and hardware level collages, paralleling the goal of harmony and amplifying the effect of manifestation.
www.behance.net/gallery/193440085/Coincidence-Timeless-Curiosities
Photography: Kayhan Kaygusuz, Alen Yahyaoğlu
With support from: Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality for their open-source live traffic camera streams. The Istanbul Modern Art Museum – Young Artists of Digital Art-program
Toprak Firat (TR) is an emerging digital artist, researcher, and programmer based in Istanbul. Toprak explores and reinterprets concepts like awe, control, and uneasiness using 3D graphics, VR, and AI. Their aim is to provoke the audience to underline the humane disconnections of the post-internet era. Istanbul-based digital artist Yasin Arıbuğa (TR) creates in 3D design, animation, graphic design, and augmented reality (AR).They are often inspired by the discomfort of things that seem extremely peaceful and moments when everything is fine. They convey this discomfort through the perspective of their smiling character, “Little Person”, into an artificial 3D environment.
Toprak Firat (TR) is an emerging digital artist, researcher, and programmer based in Istanbul. Toprak explores and reinterprets concepts like awe, control, and uneasiness using 3D graphics, VR, and AI. Their aim is to provoke the audience to underline the humane disconnections of the post-internet era. Istanbul-based digital artist Yasin Arıbuğa (TR) creates in 3D design, animation, graphic design, and augmented reality (AR).They are often inspired by the discomfort of things that seem extremely peaceful and moments when everything is fine. They convey this discomfort through the perspective of their smiling character, “Little Person”, into an artificial 3D environment.
Coincidence is a real-time collage that uses video streams from fifty publicly accessible traffic and tourist live cameras scattered across the city of Istanbul. In contrast to the usual video surveillance, the intention of the work is not to observe, but to produce a social sculpture of Istanbul through a complex composite of moving images, imprinting in its visual density the political and ideological tensions of the city’s multicultural and cosmopolitan neighborhoods. Since the work is based in real time feeds, live cameras are subject to potential delays and errors. Hence, Coincidence uses a computationally efficient workflow and simple modular design using parallel processing, in which video frames are combined to generate a single texture, which is then converted into a movie file and finally transformed into 3D collages. All these processes are segmented and encapsulated into individual scripts to produce seamless 3D visualizations, creating a living urban sculpture. In the installation view of the artwork, cables are laid out with the intention to make evident the feeds of data that are required to make it work.
Coincidence is a real-time collage that uses video streams from fifty publicly accessible traffic and tourist live cameras scattered across the city of Istanbul. In contrast to the usual video surveillance, the intention of the work is not to observe, but to produce a social sculpture of Istanbul through a complex composite of moving images, imprinting in its visual density the political and ideological tensions of the city’s multicultural and cosmopolitan neighborhoods. Since the work is based in real time feeds, live cameras are subject to potential delays and errors. Hence, Coincidence uses a computationally efficient workflow and simple modular design using parallel processing, in which video frames are combined to generate a single texture, which is then converted into a movie file and finally transformed into 3D collages. All these processes are segmented and encapsulated into individual scripts to produce seamless 3D visualizations, creating a living urban sculpture. In the installation view of the artwork, cables are laid out with the intention to make evident the feeds of data that are required to make it work.