Venus,Re-posed

VENUS, RE-POSED

Bartlett B-Pro Architectural Design · Workshop 7 · V&A Cast Courts. A visitor turns a daily narrative into a string of poses, and the platform compares them one by one along the axis of the Cast Courts: sculptures with the same pose stay, the others are swapped for a goddess of the same pose from the dataset. Switch on the “Skin” and a broad silk ribbon unfurls with two thinner ones, winding around the day’s sculptures in the order of the actions and rising and falling between them to form a spatial installation; in “Overlay” the remaining sculptures grow ribbons of their own that follow their poses.

How to use it

• Text diary: write “my day”, press “Generate pose sequence”, and the activities are split by keyword rules and given poses.
• Camera: the browser asks for permission to use the camera. MediaPipe reads joints in the browser (nothing is uploaded), the pose is analysed with six class rules, and a reliable action is added to the sequence.
• Atlas: browse 118 models and open any one to see its matte plaster render and skeleton. Detailed versions load on demand, and a sculpture with a classified pose can be placed at the selected position in the hall.
• Video / photos: key frames are extracted to read a pose sequence, and the dominant colour of each segment is taken.
• Views: Sculptures (sculptures only), Skin (silk ribbons winding around the day’s sculptures: one thick main ribbon plus two thin ones), Overlay (adding the pose ribbons of the other sculptures), and Ribbons (every sculpture with its own pose ribbon). The ribbon style can be changed in the “Skin and export” menu: ruffled, smooth or faceted.
• Editing: sequence cards can be dragged to reorder, reclassified or deleted; the complex-pose buttons act on the selected card.
• Group: the members’ works in one place: images, video, PDF, scanned and modelled 3D models, sound, notes and links, plus each person’s saved “day”. A model can be placed at any position in the hall, and a “day” can be loaded into the hall.

Notes

• The sculptures come from the group’s Goddess Sculpture Atlas: 118 records are synced, including the original 105 and 13 newly added museum scans; 117 have detailed meshes and smooth normals that keep sharp edges. Standalone statues with a classified pose enter the swap sequence, and the other models can be browsed in the atlas. The platform’s pose corrections and skeleton candidates (unconfirmed) are kept, and new works carry source, licence and credit.
• All models are rendered in one matte plaster material; the thin gold and teal rings on the floor mean “kept” and “swapped”. Skeletons are only candidates, shown for display and never to judge a body.
• The hall’s “current sequence” is 21 different sculptures picked from the atlas, and any position can be set by hand in the atlas. When swapping, the same sculpture never appears twice on the board: first one with the same pose, then one that “can also stand for” the pose, and finally one with a similar pose.
• Sounds are placeholder tones synthesised per pose; members’ own recordings can be uploaded for each class in the data panel, and colour palettes can be extracted from an image.
• Like chess pieces, the sculptures stand staggered on a checkerboard above the pool (only the “dark squares” are used), with the outer two rows slightly beyond the water. When a new day is generated, the sculptures to be replaced shatter first, then the plinths move one after another in sequence order (01, 02…): lift, slide along a row or column, turn once, set down, 2–3 seconds per step; if a target square is occupied, it waits for that plinth to leave. Sculptures that stay follow their own plinths, and the rest move only to the nearest square. Once the plinths arrive, the new sculptures form out of fragments. The layout path can be switched at the top right of the sequence bar: along the skeleton of the first action, or an S-curve.
• The space follows the V&A Cast Courts: grey-green walls on both levels (green inside the doorways of the Portico de la Gloria too), deep grey-green still water (between the red floor and the white sculptures, echoing the green walls), cream columns with red lower shafts and gilded capitals, a bracketed gallery with balustrades, green arched niches above, a red herringbone floor and an iron-lattice glass barrel vault. Sunlight pours in from the vault and casts the lattice shadows on walls and floor. At the east end stands the Trajan’s Column cast in two halves (with its relief base), and the west wall holds the cast of the Portico de la Gloria of Santiago.
• Press “Walk” at the top, or just W A S D, to walk through the hall like a game: Shift to run, drag or click the view and then look around with the mouse. The gaze stays level, sculptures in the foreground turn transparent while you touch them and return when you leave, and the hall backdrop model is left as it is; Esc exits. On a phone use the arrow keys at the bottom right.