Summary
The compass (German: “Windrose”) is the basic navigational tool of the explorer. Drawn by magnetic forces, it provides directions and guides through any kind of territory.
Ancient Chinese already knew and used these forces. Our portal is a big scale model of a compass - da Vinci Style - interacting with agents’ scanners while showing a holographic image of the essence of a portal.
Portal ownership will be shown by illumination of the base of the portal.
Portal level will be indicated by LED lights. Also mods applied to the portal will be shown by LED rings on the base of the portal.
Vibration motors will indicate portal action as well as a sound generator.
Artistic Vision
Discover. Distance. Destination. End. Mystery.
The world around us is not what it seems. We can see, hear, feel our surroundings, but there are forces which are mysterious to us, yet we can use them.
Magnets have been in the service of Humans for thousands of years. Explorers finding their path through unknown territories, traveling towards lands they had only envisioned that they could exist, used simple magnetic devices to guide them.
Amidst other navigational tools, it was probably also a compass which guided the whaling vessel Niantic through the ocean towards the West coast to pick up her mysterious cargo.
Humans generally cannot sense XM, except some especially sensitive folks. We all can use our scanners to see XM presence, though, and to find places where XM is especially strong, as around portals.
Our portal project is a direct comparison of magnetic interactions between the forces applied to magnetic compass by the Earth’s magnetic field on one hand, and the interaction between our scanners and the XM activity on the portal’s very spot, on the other hand.
The portal installation itself is a model of Leonardo da Vinci’s vision of a compass, him being the first suspending a compass so it could move freely in three dimensions. The rings emphasize the four general directions, North, South, East, and West. These are also indicated through four directional arrows of the compass rose, the other four tips indicating the secondary directions NW, NE, SW, and SE. The rings around the compass also optically remind the visitor that a portal shield could be applied here.
The construction rests on a barrel connecting the portal to the location of the event, Schloss Kaltenberg is known for brewing beer.
The tecthulhu module provided by Niantic facilitates player-portal interaction as follows:
- Portal color: The base of the portal will be illuminated blue, green, or white, depending on portal ownership. Attacks will flicker red.
- Deployment status: Resonator deployment is indicated by rgb-LEDs at the eight tips of the compass rose. Light intensity shows the respective XM percentages.
- Modification status: The type of applied mods is shown by means of four rings full of rgb LEDs at the stem of the portal.
- Sound: Scanner sounds are played by the portal according to portal action.
- Vibration: Any portal action which would zap an ingress scanner is resulting in vibration of the portal’s rings.
With the holographic projector, the portal could show light phenomena depicting a (generic) ingress portal in various states. Additionally the portal during the event at Schloss Kaltenberg could reach out to the world with projections of portals worldwide as a clue to priorly hidden pass codes and the likes.