Dérive Paints Location Portraits With Point Clouds Of Light

You can read a detailed weather report and see a bunch of photos of a far-off place, but can it really communicate the feel of a place? François Quévillon’s installation, titled Dérive, combines weather and image data to capture the essence of places like Lyon, Orleans, and Quebec. The result are ethereal point clouds of physical locations, compiled from images and atmospheric information collected by sensors in each location.

Here’s a breakdown of the elements and variables used to paint the picture.

Local time : Point size and brightness (relative to sunrise and sunset)
Temperature : Point color
Cloudiness : Point saturation and brightness
Wind : Point displacement reflecting speed and direction
Visibility : Intensity of a depth of field effect and transparency
Humidity : Depth of field focus distance and point sharpness
Precipitation : Random lines drawn from the sky are connected to the ground

Using these parameters as a framework, Dérive creates sweeping, heavenly moving portraits of each place where each data point is a miniscule source of light. The fluctuations in data ensure a dynamic image, ebbing and flowing at the rates of its meteorological and temporal conditions. See some of the breathtaking images below.

3D point cloud of Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Dérive at Galerie Verticale (Laval Quebec, Canada), view of Montreal

Dérive at Galerie Verticale (Laval Quebec, Canada), view of Lyon

Dérive at Galerie Verticale (Laval Quebec, Canada) view of Sherbrooke

Shuttled Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) data from US Geological Survey, Rhone Alps region in France

[via: Creative Applications]

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