by Meghna Sharma

Description

Who really controls the system?

In the spirit of rebellion, the criminals won (spoiler alert: at least in S1 and S2) and took control of something they should not have been able to attain. Simply because of their anger and vengeance, they succeeded! the rotating image and red colors with background noise of the theme song, Bella Ciao, creates this piece of fan art and resistance!

In the show Money Heist, criminals who have been screwed by the system take control of the Royal Mint of Spain to rebel against government corruption and injustice. Inspired by this statement, I made a generative art piece to represent these motifs.

In this piece, the starting image is a rotating png of the Royal Mint of Spain that is within a gridded spotlight, aiming to give ‘national intelligence briefing’ aura. Upon spam clicking, the truth is revealed. The grid becomes red and a mask appears above the Mint, showing who is really in control.

Process

Ideation + Design

                                                                 Iteration 1

I began this project without Money Heist in mind, by just glancing through the gallery of existing generative art in openprocessing.com.

Upon finding ‘Erosion’, shown to the right, I immediately thought of 3D models of landscapes and environments and the Mint of Spain came to mind. I knew I wanted to make a statement from how I was feeling after binging Money Heist, along the lines of the Mint eroding and revealing the robbers inside.

                                                                        Final Iteration 

After brainstorming what motifs I could include, I was between multiple ideas:

• Salvador Dali

  • Dali’s work represent strength, resistance, and the subconscious. While the masks in the show pull directly from one of his works, I toyed with the idea of animating one of his works, making it come to life. This leads me to the next point about puppet visuals →

• Puppet Visuals

  • Dali’s The Elephants (1948) shows two elephants with extremely long legs approaching each other amidst an orange/red background. They symbolise power and dominance as they are still standing via frail, unassuming legs.
  • I had the idea of flipping this image vertically, as the legs also look like puppet strings when upside-down. This could make a statement on what we assume to be powerful and what may be truthfully behind that.
  • However, due to time constrains and limited knowledge, I brought the same motif to the next point about taking control from the controlling →

• Taking control from the controlling
  • I still wanted to make a piece that generates the real truth from pressure from the user. Ideally, I would use a physical object with pressure or weight sensors to symbolize how the truth can be relieved with enough protest and will.
  • For time sakes, I have my graphic reveal upon fast touchpad clicks. The Royal Mint of Spain is depicted and spinning, as if it is being auctioned and is ‘on sale’. The original colors are just white and slightly tech-y to give an industrial, computer, briefing room energy. The grids, dots, lines, and mask hovering over the Mint slowly appear and become red with more clicks.

Prototype + Build

Code

Upon browsing the gallery on the website, I found a visual of [dance]floor by KomaTebe, with an empty rotating set of grids and lines.

I implemented image uploading to the center and above the grid, and resized it to now fit the screen. I also added a function to detect mouse pressing which increases the intensity of the presence of red and makes the mask visible.

Reflection