Stoke

About: STOKE is an exploration in translating the emotional and social qualities of a true campsite into something native to the built environment. We were fascinated by how firelight constructs space and how the light and sound of a fire seems to move in sync with the people surrounding it. STOKE placed participants at the center of the fire, and made the relationship between their emotions and the surrounding conflagration literal.

A suspended forest was built around a central platform in OCADU’s Great Hall, affording individuals and groups a place to rest in the stillness of a forest night or dance beside a roaring flame. The installation used four projectors, 52 custom made projection surfaces, and an internally-lit central platform that concealed a massive subwoofer.

The deep trembling of the audio composition reverberates through the visitors’ bodies, creating an immediate connection between large and small movements, as well as the canopy of sound and light being affected. It invites visitors to dance, gather, lie down, or run around in an experience familiar enough to be comfortable, but alien enough to be exciting.

Stoke was conceived and created by Relay Studio, and was commissioned by OCAD University for its Nuit Blanche exhibition, Gather, shown on October 5th, 2013. Custom software was written in C++ with openFrameworks, OpenGL, and OpenCV to form the application that drove the visual and interactive experience. That application controlled a dynamic multi-channel drone composition in Ableton Live. The installation source code and Ableton project can be found on Github

Relay Studio is a collaboration between Andrew Lovett-Barron, Eliot Callahan, Adam Carlucci, and Nick Crampton.

Special thanks to Marissa Neave, Jeff Zoeller, Michaud Garneau, Car Martin, and Dave Clark.

Documentation by Justin Black.