SEAT 2007 - Roadshow Geneva - contents
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Biotopes is an interactive bar that was created in 2004 by Tmema, with the production of Ars Electronica Futurelab. It's an interactive installation for cafe-like social venues. The interactive bar forms the natural habitat of a species of creatures that exhibits a unique pattern of social behavior. When someone touches the surface of their virtual terrarium, these digital organisms react with playful curiosity. They flock to drinking glasses placed in their vicinity like hungry sharks, and teem around everything that enters their world. But have no fear: they don't bite. If you catch one with your fingers, it will follow your movements, and you can send it on in any direction and from table to table. Left alone, the creatures descend back into the depths of their digital environment. In this way, the colorful organisms become part of a communicative game involving the users of the Interactive Bar, whereby the flow of communication extends throughout the individual terrariums and creates an interconnection among the participants.
In Q, created by FABRICA, water is the interface. The player dips his or her hand into a glass tank full of water and swirls it round and around to create waves. The waves are picked up by sensors inside the tank, which instruct a computer to generate musical sounds and 3d patterns of light - which are projected back into the water. "What I think works with Q is its hybridity - it is not really under the control of the user. You create waves with your hand but you can never be sure of getting the same result twice, the waves are unpredictable. So you feel as if you have partial control of a natural system. It goes against the mainstream of interaction design, which is about aiming for perfect control. It is a liquid installation of an abstract thought, a machine that behaves unlike a machine." - Francesco Meneghini
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Loopscape is a fighting-game machine for two people using a 360-degree LED matrix display. Each player operates a wireless controller. The rule of the game itself is quite simple: you are in a dogfight and each fighter has to attack the other. Due to the circular nature of the looping display, you have to run around the display following the fighter you control. Moreover, if you fire a missile once then it will fly round and round forever until it hits something. So you might be hit by your own missile!
"First of all, my original interest was make an endless world. It's not special to introduce this idea into a virtual space, like the "Lifegame" or "Defender" does. But I wondered what would happen if it physically existed. One day I patrolled around Akihabara to find curved LED matrix in low price. So I made it. This game has two effects: 1) Physical interaction -- As you describe, you should follow a fighter you control. Virtual world affects physical world, and vice versa. I saw some players tackling shoulder to shoulder. 2) Strategy -- if you hit a lot of missiles without care, you'll hit yourself. This is much interesting for me. Cause and effect makes a loop." - Ryota Kuwakubo
More info on Loopscape.
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The inflatable HeavenSeed contains an accelerometer unit at its centre. When you play with it, it produces a sound effect according to the movement you make. For instance, it makes different sounds for throwing, shaking, rolling or spinning.
"I wanted digital toy without any button or pad, like classic tools or natural objects. When you see some widgets on an object, you'll notice that you have to / can do something and it has some purpose. On the other hand if you grab a simple ball -- less purpose defined object -- for a while, you'll unconsciously make some action with it. I think such moment can be a beginning of a fantasy. I imagined an object that increases such relationship between itself and a person." - Ryota Kuwakubo
More info on HeavenSeed
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Interactive Walkway, made by Electroland, features two glass pedestrian bridges designed as "Interactive Walkways," each with a field of LED lights embedded in resilient walking surfaces. Sensors detect the presence of people and the system triggers interactive light patterns on the walkway floor.
Spatialized sound effects enhance the presence of patterns in the active field. Sound Designer Dane Davis is creating a library of unique sounds for this project.
The Interactive Breezeway engages pedestrians in an ephemeral interactive encounter where their position and paths are traced by colorful avatars and effects.
The glowing ceiling and walls are composed of individual LED pixels and white LED backlights. The overall assembly provides for an experience that registers well during the day and provides ambient light in the evening. Target's brand is represented by Target bullseye logo light fixtures integrated with the interactive pixel array.
Body Movies throws an enormous projection of human figures onto the side of a building in a public square. This monumental image is 'burned out' by an arc light situated halfway between the image projector and the wall. By standing between the arc light and the wall, the spectator/player can create a shadow that reveals the projected image. If the spectator/player moves his or her shadow to match or 'embody' a figure in the projected image, image analysis software recognizes the match and swithes the projected figure for the next image. By embodying figures this way, the audience moves the sequence forward.
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer explains more: ''"Body Movies was inspired by Samuel van Hoogstraten's engraving 'The Shadow Dance', which appears in his 'Inleiding tot de Hogeschool der Schilderkunst'. Made in Rotterdam in 1675, this engraving shows a minute source of light placed at ground level and the shadows of actors taking on demonic or angelic characteristics depending on their size.
More info on Body Movies
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Digital Aquarium is an interactive experience using 150 motorola handsets suspended from the roof of the tank exhibition space outside the institute of contemporary art. On the outside of the tank was mobile phone numbers that consumers were invited to call in order to interact with the installation. Each number related to a series of patterns that triggered off a chain reaction as the signal travelled from phone to phone, creating a shimmering effect of fish svimming around an aquarium as each mobile lit up, vibrated and rang in a pre-programmed sequence.
The typographic Tree was the result of a digit internal project that went on to be exhibited at the institute of contemporary art. Exploring the relationship between sound and vision, users were encouraged to speak into sensors on a life sized tree stump. A programme then converted what they said into virtual trees composed of type and visuals, that grew before their eyes on a giant screen. Undulating tones caused the tree to evolve, twist and contort. Louder, more abrupt disturbances stimulated flora to bloom unexpectedly or disturbed fauna far off in the distance. Once saturated the tree shed its characteristics in order to change form, tone and environment. Visitors interacted with the tree in different ways, whispering, reciting poetry and playing mobile rings tones to it. Each creation was added to an online gallery where visitors could go to identify and cultivate their tree. the project won a design week award in 2003.
More info on The typographic Tree
Displayed at bitforms gallery's doorstep, Daniel Rozin's Weave Mirror assembles 768 motorized and laminated C-shaped prints along the surface of a picture plane that texturally mimics a homespun basket. A seemingly organic smoky portrait comes in focus to the sound of clacking steps made by the sculpture's moving parts. Informed by traditions of both textile design and new media, the "Weave Mirror" paints a picture of viewers using a gradual rotation in greyscale value on each C-ring. A playful juxtaposition between the rustic and photographic, this sculpture is suspended from the ceiling. Its functional circuitry and wiring is visible behind the picture plane, exposing its craft.
Exhibited for the first time at bitforms gallery, Daniel Rozin's Peg Mirror comprises 650 circular wooden pieces that are cut on an angle. Casting shadows by twisting and rotating in unison, wooden pegs forming concentric circles surround a small central camera. The mirrored image produced in this work is activated by software authored by Rozin that processes video signals and breaks up imagery geometrically, seemingly pixel by pixel. The silently moving wood components in this piece flicker like jewels or coins in the spotlight, challenging our notions about what constitutes a "digital object".