I'm watching you/me: Live drawing and VR visualization of spherical perspectives using Touch Designer

There are currently very few options for executing live spherical drawings for an audience. This work presents an artefact which demonstrates one possible way to achieve such drawings in a performative setting with concurrent interactive live feed of the spherical drawing's VR visualization. The authors aim at stimulating the under-explored form of expression that spherical perspectives represent by facilitating, demonstrating, opening, and extending their use both with general applications and in particular with digital art live presentations. To highlight the artefact's utility, we consider the state of art of drawing techniques for different spherical perspectives (equirectangular, azimuthal equidistant, cubical) and the software available for their practice. The artefact processes various inputs into one mixed output. The inputs are a drawing generated either with traditional or digital techniques, and OSC data taken from an external device. The output is a classical perspective projected onto a screen (optionally also on a mobile device). The software has been made with node-based programming: the free non-commercial version of TouchDesigner, which allowed us to evaluate the workflow with great versatility and a good integration with Python before entering a coding stage. The artefact is tested within the exhibition “I'm watching you/me” (IMWYM), which is part of Lufo Art project. The live presentation explores and explodes Hybrid Immersive Models (HIMs) within digital art and uses the artefact as a way of expanding spherical perspectives’ applications.