CoNtRaSt
Beyond any particular imagery, Berlinis a city of contrasts: German and English. East and West. Döner Kebabs and Currywurst. Tech incubators and anarchist punks. Shared bikes with “Tourists Go Home” graffiti on them. These stories and many other reflect the unique qualities and tensions of visiting Berlin. Our photos hope to capture a fragment of this, through a small Processing application that algorithmically displays and inverts a collection of our images.
We also expanded the graffiti element of Berlin and collected some materials from various places, especially from the Berlin Wall. Berlin is a city with great rigorousness, however, such graffitis also represent the freedom and the boldness that the city truly owns. Visual capturing of historical / modern sights in Berlin were then manipulated with merged graffitis on a range of more “serious” architectures, which offered an opposites spirit then what the Berlin Wall would offer, as well as the Berlin Parliament, given our piece a whimsical twist. In addition, video footages of Berlin (famous sights, streets and display windows at shopping centers) were also shot and edited in a split-screen aesthetic that also explored the contrasting scenes happen in Berlin everyday. One scene in our video featured a protest that took place at the Brandenburg Gate, which referenced the overall theme, Political Freedom.
import java.util.*;
ArrayList<PImage> images = new ArrayList<PImage>();
void setup() {
String path = sketchPath() + "/data";
File[] files = listFiles(path);
for (File f : files) {
PImage newImage;
newImage = loadImage(f.getName());
images.add(newImage);
}
printArray(images);
size(500,500);
frameRate(1);
}
void draw() {
background(255);
drawRandomImage();
}
void drawRandomImage() {
int rndIdx = (int)random( (float)images.size() );
PImage i = images.get(rndIdx);
boolean isInverted = (random(1) < 0.5);
if (isInverted) {
i.filter(INVERT);
}
//image(i, (width/2) - i.width/2, (height/2) - i.height/2);
image(i, 0, 0, width, height);
}