Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/649887
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 6 MARCH 2016 30 This Week St George's Square in Valletta just got a little bit more interesting, thanks to a recent – and award-winning – project by local audio- visual production company Shadeena. Creating an 'invisible sculpture' of a tree that can be viewed and 'nourished' through your smartphone, Shadeena's Martin Bonnici speaks to TEODOR RELJIC about the dynamics of Un/Seen Evergreen, whose future development plans have scored the company an Award in Creative Innovation at this year's edition of the Malta Innovation Awards What were some of the initial ideas and discussions that led to the project? Did exploring Generative Art and Aug- mented Reality lead to the topic in ques- tion, or was it the other way around? Initial discussions started from a techni- cal side, in the sense that I worked on a generative art project with RedTape Dance Company for Ziguzajg and I remembered how much I enjoyed coding and exploring the relationship between mathematics and beautiful imagery. So that project set me off thinking, what doors are opened by newer technology? The recent developments of products such as the (now discontinued) Google Glass, the recently released Oculus Rift and the upcoming HoloLens by Microsoft, served as a big inspiration to push towards using Augmented Reality. As I was sketching out the idea, at first I thought a mega structure or a huge tree, but seeing as the environment had been a prominent issue for quite a while in local media, so a tree seemed like the most fit- ting element. And what do trees do? They grow, so adding the generative element to it was only natural. Was it easy to assemble the team that makes up the project? How did you set about looking for people with these par- ticular skill sets? Not really, there are a lot of talented in- dividuals in Malta and very often it's most- ly about challenging them to channel their creativity and skills into something that stands out. Maybe I've been lucky to be surrounded by really talented people, but assembling the right team has been the least of my worries in any of the Shadeena projects. For the Un/Seen Evergreen, it was also an opportunity for me to get back into coding – a hobby of mine throughout most of my life – so while I had invaluable help from our intern Andreas Bugeja and our project consultants, Samuel Sultana and Kris Camilleri, I shouldered most of the code, especially writing what I like to call 'the DNA' of the tree. What would you say are the main ben- efits of Generative Art, and do you think it's got potential to thrive in the Maltese context? Why? What is augmented reality? Augmented reality (AR) is a live direct or indirect view of a physical, real- world environment whose elements are augmented (or supplemented) by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. It is related to a more general concept called mediated reality, in which a view of reality is modified (possibly even diminished rather than augmented) by a computer. As a result, the technology functions by enhancing one's current perception of reality. Martin Bonnici • Photo by Elisa von Brockdorff Can you see the tree?