“It’s impressive to see how quickly you can start building things in Notch, the interface is easy to understand and it’s quick to get the hang of.”

INTUS Interactive Design stuns visitors at Mutek Festival with their out-of-this-world interactive installation made with Notch. The Mexico City-based festival took place in an ex-industrial fabric warehouse at the end of November. Gil Castro, co-founder of INTUS talks us through their first project in Notch.

INTUS is an Interactive Studio that breathes life into immersive experiences, visual installations and interactive systems. A combination of creativity and cutting edge technologies, INTUS reinvent the capacities of astonishment.

“‘Tycho Magnetic Anomaly’ is an interactive installation based on the study of outer space and its relationship with the human being. It is a tribute to Arthur C. Clarke’s  ‘A Space Odyssey’. Inspired by Clarke’s Monoliths of lunar crater Tycho, we wanted to create an installation that raises the enigma of origin”. Gil envisioned giant LED Monoliths which visitors could interact with physically and philosophically: “The monoliths symbolize great leaps in the evolution towards a higher life form”.

During a two month pre-production period INTUS Design began R&D for their monoliths. “The first challenge was the creation of super high-quality real-time visuals within a very short timeframe. Normally we code our real-time generative content using glsl, however in this timeframe, it was impossible. Once we landed on Notch, we found it the ideal tool to generate incredible graphic arts in real-time without the need to program shaders in glsl.”

TUIO data was sent to TouchDesigner using a Scanning Laser Rangefinder. TouchDesigner communicated the positional data to Notch via OSC. Using this data Notch created generative content which would interact with the end-user in real-time on the LED monoliths. INTUS utilised Notch’s Physics features, particle systems, procedural meshing and fields to create “a spatial portal that allows visitors to interact with generative art that exceeds physical dimensions and elevate us to higher instances.”

INTUS’s monoliths magnetised visitors with their spectacular interactive motion graphics. Visitors had the opportunity to explore and interact with the depths of the unseen universe as envisaged by INTUS. Meanwhile, INTUS began a new exploratory mission: “We discovered the potential that Notch has in the development of interactive installations, without a doubt it will be something that we will continue exploring in our next projects.”