Haavard Tveito

Digital and contemporary art

Borrowed
senses.

A sequoia. The ear of a bat. A street due for demolition. I record things with instruments that reach past human senses — lidar, CT, ultrasound, photogrammetry — then build the object that hands the result back: something to put your head inside, to hold, or to hear.

grid — · displacement 0.00 · vertices —

Selected works

The cover was made by 3D scanning the band members and turning them into particle systems. Following the title, the portraits dissolve into stars and re-form as new constellations.

The work was produced in Unity 3D, which let the designs be generated in real time rather than composited frame by frame.

The band is based in Bergen and the design was made in São Paulo. The distance ruled out a scanning session, so the models were reconstructed by photogrammetry from photographs the band took themselves.

Capture
Photogrammetry from the band's own photographs
Built in
Unity 3D, generated in real time
Format
Vinyl sleeve and gatefold spreads
Released
15 February 2019

SKAAR — Feed Me to the Stars

A journey from the roots to the canopy of a virtual sequoia, where virtual reality is used to make the invisible visible. You watch water travel from the roots out to the branches — a process that takes days in the tree, compressed here into minutes.

The piece was shown at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, where it won the Storyscapes Award. During the festival a scent device was used for the first time, letting visitors smell the forest and the tree itself.

I worked on the design of the sculptural centrepiece and the openings in the trunk that visitors place their heads into. The sculpture gives four people at a time a more intimate space in which to try the installation, and hides and protects all the technical equipment.

Its outer layers are foam, flocked to give a soft, tactile surface that heightens the experience of the headset.

Role
Sculptural centrepiece, trunk openings
Material
Flocked foam over structure
Capacity
Four visitors at a time
Award
Storyscapes Award, Tribeca Film Festival

Marshmallow Laser Feast Other Fabrications

Here we imagine what an urban palimpsest can be in the digital age. Using 3D scanning and virtual reality, our project records personal stories and local histories, layering them over the city at a 1:1 scale.

Building this collective memory matters most in areas undergoing dramatic redevelopment. Our first initiative, The Camden Palimpsest, takes the UK High Speed Rail 2 project as a case study. It carries the stories of Camden residents — some of whom will lose their homes and workplaces — and explores how their lives will be transformed.

The virtual Palimpsests aim at more inclusive planning practice, using emerging technology to put communities, governments and developers directly in conversation. They also become historical documents, digitally recording spaces and stories that might otherwise be lost.

Created with John Russell Beaumont and Takashi Torisu at the Interactive Architecture Lab, The Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL). Supervised by Ruairi Glynn and Vincent Huyghe.

Capture
3D scanning at 1:1 scale
Medium
Virtual reality
Case study
HS2, Camden
Lab
Interactive Architecture Lab, The Bartlett, UCL

Interactive Architecture Lab Wired The Guardian Designboom Creative Applications Fabbula

An installation investigating how bats locate space, combining 3D printed bat ears with binaural microphones and ultrasound so that you explore your environment through sound.

The ears were based on CT scans of bats, sculpted in ZBrush and 3D printed with SLS technology. They sit on a flocked black casing housing an amplifier and a distance sensor, suspended on a branch so the listener can hear from a distance. Their shape spatialises the microphones into a binaural three dimensional effect, letting the listener sense three dimensional space through sound in real time.

A continuation of In the Eyes of the Animal, exploring the sensory world of animals through technology and art. Made in collaboration with sound artist Antoine Bertin and creative director Barney Steel of Marshmallow Laser Feast.

Ears
CT scans, sculpted in ZBrush
Print
SLS nylon, flocked casing
Housing
Amplifier, distance sensor, branch mount
Shown
Bluedot Festival, Jodrell Bank

Bluedot Festival Marshmallow Laser Feast Antoine Bertin

About

Practice

Most of what I make starts with a scan. A giant sequoia, the ear canal of a bat, a Camden street scheduled for demolition, a band in Bergen — recorded by lidar, CT or photogrammetry, then carried across into something that can be entered rather than only looked at.

The second half of the work is always physical. Data on its own isn't an experience; it needs a body. A flocked foam trunk with openings to put your head into. A pair of printed ears on a pole, lifted into a tree. A sleeve you can hold. How a piece is built decides how close a person can get to it, so the fabrication matters as much as the capture.

What holds my attention is perception at its edges — ultrasound below hearing, the days-long circulation of water inside a tree, the city that will stand once the present one is gone. Instruments record these without difficulty. People cannot sense them at all. The work sits in that gap.

Made with Marshmallow Laser Feast and at the Interactive Architecture Lab, The Bartlett (UCL). Shown at Tribeca and Bluedot. Available for commissions, exhibitions and collaboration.

Working methods

  • Capture Lidar · CT · photogrammetry
  • Real-time Unity · vvvv gamma · Unreal Engine
  • Modelling ZBrush · Rhino
  • Sound Binaural · ultrasound · spatial
  • Fabrication SLS print · flocked foam

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