Geolocation based WebVR mining of BitElement. There are 5 elments in the Chinese Zodiac chart. BitElement is the 6th. Its a digital combination of your unique element based on your WebVR mining activity in the BitElement epicentre XinChang, Pudong, China.
The idea of this project is to explore the city of XinChang. However this concept could be applied to any location.
Xinchang has a long and varied history. First starting as a salt mining town a thousand three hundred years ago. Then turning to a market town for trade. After that poets occupied the village and now it’s becoming an artist village. The whole time xinchang has managed to maintain its history and heritage without loosing its identity. It even has its own dialect. Being close to one of the worlds fastest growing mega cities, shanghai, but being just far enough away that its not effected by redevelopment and gentrification, has allowed it to maintain its cultural significance.
Chinese zodiacs believe in five fundamental elements that make up a chart. Water, wood, earth, fire and metal. These elements all have different properties and characteristics. According to Chinese mythology these characteristics dictate your personality. For instance a person who is born in the year when water is in the chart will be flexible and easily shaped yet turbulent as opposed to metal which would make that person strong and firm, they can be shaped but only with effort.
The elements have other meanings too. In cartography they represent the north south east west and centre of a region.
This artwork explores these elements and their relation to each other and in particular the creative mind. The work tries to emulate each element in a geolocation based WebVR experience.
This work proposes a 6th element that has become essential to modern life, the digital bit element (byte) which is unique to you. Its your digital signature. This element is a combination of all other elements. As the Chinese zodiac chart has already existed for years and can’t be modified this platform allows you to create your own bitelement based on your personal info and activity with the artwork as an extension to the chart.
You the visitor is invited to explore the north south east west and central XinChang old village with a map and some VR goggles. On the map the 5 elements are marked and your invited to explore them. When you discover an element it unlocks a characteristic and logs your activity into your profile. When you return to base your able to generate your own unique element.
This work explores that unique element that represents you. Its your XinChang BitElement.
Water Wood Earth Fire Metal BitElement
Phase 1 Simple 5 elements to be discovered in 5 zones. QR code scan. Temp data store progress Base zone is the art centre
- stylised elements and zodiac about water now
- Sound
- QR code
- Neon
- stylised elements and zodiac about wood now
- Sound
- QR code
- neon
- stylised elements and zodiac about earth now
- Sound
- QR code
- Neon
- stylised elements and zodiac about water now
- Sound
- QR code
- Neon
- stylised elements and zodiac about metal now
- Sound
- QR code
- metal
Desaturated ambient occlusion. All white to show the elements. When you find an element the scene reveals that element. The longer you stay the richer that element. For example if I like what’re I will stay there for a long time and make the colour as rich as possible. If I dislike fire then when I find that element I will not spend as much time there and nmaybe not see its full richness. I may even skip or miss an element.
How to see your elelment. In the eral world back at the main gallery a screen would showcase all ButElements created. But in the virtual world you can visit your element in a digital gallery.
The idea of mining BitElment is that you have to mine it both physicaly and digitaly by going to a designated element (in XinChang for now) and scanning the QR code then staying in the WebVR experince of that element. It can be anywhere esentially and would be nice to designate Geo Location coordinates rather than QR codes because they cant be hacked.
Element sounds. If water was a sound how would it sound? When they leave what do they see?
Come to XinChang Pudong China to Mine BitElements.
TBC
- Fire WebVR
- Water WebVR
- Wood WebVR
- Earth WebVR
- Metal WebVR
- BitElement WebVR
- BitElement Mininer Proof of Concept
- Dat-project distributed DB of Profiles
- Integrate mining
- Gallery