The Curious Cabinet

An Interactive digital exhibit originally developed for the Florence Arts Centre’s Fruitful exhibition (Feb-Mar 2022) with an effect I refer to as a Momentograph.

It has since made appearances in:

The Momentograph - Create continuous artworks just by moving

I have always been interested in mirrors, how they were once revered, feared, loved and despised. And their roles in magic, trickery, superstition, divination alongside their use in the arts, mythology, religion and cinema.

I like to reimagine mirrors using hidden technology to visualize their other worldliness. In this case capturing moments as visual tracks, as if souls truly do leave behind traces in the mirror’s reflection.

Standing before the cabinet your reflected image is woven into chorded patterns. As you move and play you’ll create twisted columns, floating islands of colour, long twisted spaghetti fingers or psychedelic Rorschach tests.

Play

You can control your creations further with a dial to select different alignment options and a button to toggle symmetry.

Dial mounted on a wooden board below a vertical screen with instructions to turn or press.

Turn the dial to choose how moments are tracked, or push it to add/remove symmetry.

Screen within a display cabinet showing a colourful smear

Momentograph set to Central alignment with symmetry on.

Vertical screen mounted on fleur-de-lis wall paper.

I love the mix of old and new provided by keeping the original wallpaper backing.

Screen shows top part of man's body with twisted column beneath.

Symmetry off with top alignment.

The emergent abstract images your movements create become mesmerising, moving you (literally 😊) into a flow state where your reflection and time become your brushes.

Colourful symmetrical extrusions ranging from yellow to blue.

Behind the Scenes

I repurposed a charity shop cabinet, discarded TV, webcam and Raspberry Pi (inexpensive mini-computer) to create the base for the cabinet.

Display cabinet with doors taken off with tv on its side inside.

A trip to Age UK charity shop furnished me with an old telly and a lovely cabinet to work with.

This piece has been developed from my ongoing experiments with Javascript and “Slit Scanning” - an old film effect used to build static images from a stack of thin slices taken from each frame.

Cables attached to circuit board

The Raspberry Pi is a tiny computer that can be programmed to create the effects and wire in physical controls.

Computer, workbench and hanging cnc machine in a shed

After some cardboard prototypes my friendly shed-based robot cuts a frame and control panel.

Webcam with wooden surround above a framed vertical screen.

One of the cabinet's footplates is repurposed to integrate the look of the webcam.

Slit Scanning

As it is explained on Wikipedia slit scanning started out as a manual artistic technique using a slit to expose thin strips onto the film.

The most comprehensive write up on slit scanning I found was compiled by the inspirational Artist Golan Levin and can be found here: http://www.flong.com/archive/texts/lists/slit_scan/ .

The web page linked above contains source code to produce the effect using a bit of software called Processing .

Another of my digital art inspirations is Dan Shiffman and his youtube channel: The Coding Train . If you want to understand slit scanning more and learn to code it yourself, his video is an excellent place to start.

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Technology used

In the video above Dan explains how to create the slit scan effect using a Javascript library called p5.js . If you would like to dip a toe into the world of creative coding I can think of no better place to start than with p5.js. It has an amazing community all focused on making coding accessible and inclusive for everyone.

  • I did use Javascript running in an html page to make my version, but not with p5.js this time.
  • I used a Raspberry Pi mini-computer to run the code. The Raspberry Pi has lots of advantages:
    • Allows me to add physical controls.
    • Can be set up to automatically display the artwork.
    • Withstands being shut off and started up by flicking the socket power switch.
    • Really small, so easily hidden withing the piece.
    • Relatively cheap - this one cost me £40 from Pimoron i.
  • I used Electron.js To control the html page so it fills the screen without all the gumpf a browser usually shows at the top.
  • To get the push and turn inputs to control the web pages I used Node.js and Socket.io .
    • It was my first time tring to add phyical inputs like this and couldn’t be happier with how it went. Socket.io worked exactly as advertised.

Electron , Node , Socket.io and Raspberry Pi OS (the software running on the Pi to make it just like using a PC) are all amazing, free and open source software.