Workshop results exhibition Interactivos? 2006

MAGIC TORCH

Alberto García Pi.
Collaborators: Julio Obellerio, Martín Nadal y Alberto Cortés.

"An international team of scientists (and artists) has been working intensely via email in order to compress thousands of small stars together with the sub-container of luminic photons which emits a light similar to that of a simple hand lantern. The torch battery sets off a trigger which sets the hand torch to the on position. Afterwards, the same algorithm is inverted for the de-compression of the stars when the luminic photons collide in the limited space of the giant TV set drawn on the wall. All this causes an optical illusion in the audience which prompted us to call the torch a Magic Torch, although the use of this adjective might not be fully justified, since it is a well known fact that there is a scientific explanation for everything". Alberto García Pi.

http://www.playthemagic.com/ 

WAVES

Daniel Palacios Jiménez

This projects attempts to reveal the ways in which our presence alters the space we're in; our presence itself is already a kind of interaction with the environment, with no need to manipulate any interface. Waves is an interactive sculpture which attempts to break the barrier between what we see and what we hear; a device which combines these two senses in order to present us with the sound of and image and the image of a sound. Daniel Palacios Jiménez.

http://www.waves.stopantplay.com

MEMENTO

Jeldrik Schmuch/Ulrike Gollner

When we are moving through a room we only know what’s going on there right in that moment. We do not receive any information about the people who have been there before or the things that happened. When we are leaving the room nothing remains of our appearance. So why not leaving a part of ourselves to interact with others? Memento is an interactive video installation that films the shapes of people and connects them with sound. All the shapes are combined to a short movie clip that plays at the same time people are filmed. So, although someone is alone with the installation his shape joins a virtual space full of shadows from former visitors.

http://memento.smugo.com

NAMJUNECENA

Rafael Marchetti y Fernando Rabelo

De-mythifying the black box by creating with technological residues.

A dinner made up of technological refuse organised in an interactive physical space which offers the invites a selection of commodities. Through the relationship between space and the object, the visual noise, the proximity of the table and the distance of the scrap materials, Namjunecena proposes a de-mythification of the technological blacl box. All equipment is presented "as is", set up to emphasise that the interface is the message.

References:
http://www.desvirtual.com
http://turbulence.org/Works/mimoSa/mimosa_ing/index.html
http://www.arduino.cc
http://www.paikstudios.com

TRAYECTOS/PASSAGES

Idea and designer: Mario Gutiérrez. Desarrollo C++: Martín Nadal

The Trayectos project is based on a series of works with this same subject matter that I have been developing in the last few years. I am interested in working with physical space as a locus of research, of process, as a space emptied out of contents which needs the spectator in order to aquire form and meaning. In this case, the spectator enters in an empty space, and fails to see an exhibit. He only sees his own traces, left by his trajectory, a line and a frequency which interact with him, and prompt him to keep moving forward. When he abandons the space, his traces disappear.

D3SOMBRA

Emanuele Mazza

The installation consists of an interactive audio-visual system controlled by an application based on video tracking. It is a overhead-projecting system, and a surveillance camera analyses the visitor's shadow on the screen; analysis data is then processed by a series of open-source C++ libraries specifically designed for image processing. The video tracking also generates position and modulation variations on a wireframe grid generated by the OpenGL library, which act as a background texture and is viewed through a transparent mask based on the visitor's shadow. In this case, we're using an audio file (FM synthesis) in which "panning" (2.1) and volume vary depending on the values obtained from movement.

http://www.d3cod3.com
http://www.laboluz.org

LOOK AT YOUR SHADOW

Juan Pablo Alberca (Txampa)

This installation is based on the projection of images over the shadows made by the participants on a screen. The more shadow there is, the larger the projected area. This way, users can interact in order to enlarge the shadows and visualise the images.

http://www.txampa.com

PREDATOR?

Carl-Johan Rosen / Henrik Wrangel

Predator? is an installation letting the visitors interact with a virtual predator using their whole bodies. Visitors can move around inside the installation area and the predator hunts them. The predator changes its behavior depending on the behavior of the visitors. It protects its home corner and if anybody gets to close it catches and eats them. A caught visitor disappears from the visualization. The more visitors the predator catches the larger he gets, but he also shrinks with time. We want Predator? to be a trigger for visitors to collaborate. Without collaboration between visitors the predator will be the stronger part of the interaction. But when people start to interact between each other they become the stronger part and can then trick the predator.

http://www.carljohanrosen.com

THE IDEALIZED BODY IN SCULPTURAL EVENTS CYCLE, SCULPTURAL EVENTS

César Martínez. Consultancy by David Cuartielles. It is a sculpture with a human form, made in vulcanised latex oilskin which incorporates a movement detector. When detected, the presence of the audience activates an air gun which allows the sculpture to stand up while being regarded by the visitors. Air is the skeleton which allows the sculpture to sustain itself, a metaphor which plays on the fact that air sustains life. Once the spectator has left the room, the sculpture is switched off and symbolically “dies”. The spectator’s presence is useful and necessary in order to keep the sculpture alive. Finally, the focus of the piece is in the visitors themselves, and they are the ones who harness the vital energy of works of art.

IF COWS COULD FLY, MY GRANNY WOULD HAVE WHEELS, AND SHE WOULD BE A BICYCLE

César Martínez

A space of “simple interaction” in which the spectator can see himself as part of the piece in a TV monitor. What is sought in this mini-installation is not only to reduce the space normally used by installations - which tend to be transitional spaces for the spectator - but also to suggest to the audience that interactivity allows something more than just being a “passive cow”; that is, the spectator is the work itself.

INTERACCIONES CONSTRUCTIVAS

Álvaro Castro and Carlos Cabañero (software design and development)

Fundamental concepts. Two approaches:
1)Minimal concept. An abstract space where points from a multi-dimensional space are projected into a three-dimensional one. Possibly a tool for visualising particles, their interactions, which inhabit virtual worlds of mathematical dimensions, their emergence phenomena, their boundless relationships with a mind limited to three dimensions (x, y, z)…

2)Virtual architecture in a computational medium. If we take an abstract multi-dimensional particle as a minimal unit of measurement, and we assign it architectural values and behaviours, the search for emergence phenomena in architecture would take place in this abstract space. Multi-dimensionality will be virtual; its three-dimensional projection, a research into the real.

http://castrocastilla.com/

IMPLEMENT!

Exhibition of different interactive prototypes made by students at K3, the School of Arts and Communication, Malmö University, Sweden.

http://webzone.k3.mah.se/projects/implement

HIP TO BE SQUARE

People interact and relate to music in different ways. But where do you store your music and how do you play it? Hip to be square is a concept for a navigation system that questions these questions and answers them with an alternative music player: a piece of furniture for storing your music collection. The music player has no display or visual buttons. By inserting a cube into the grid a song will play and when a new cube is inserted the song changes to a new one corresponding to that particular combination. This action challenges the user to build up a combination of cubes in the grind. The goal is to make the user more engaged in the interaction in a more physical way then the conventional way of navigating by just pushing a button. We chose to make the player in wood because it gives more of a natural feeling. Wood also gives a crafted touch and removes the high tech feeling.

WHITE LIES

Designers: Sara Stiber, Erika Nyström, Magnus Johnsson, Markus Isaksson, Estebán

This project aims to explore the way people act and interact with other people’s secrets. It is not to be discarded as a source of gossip, although there is a fine line between the terms gossip and secrets. This is merely an attempt to play with curiosity. Curiosity is not always considered to be a good quality, especially when it concerns other people’s private lives. Just think about how many people frown upon Reality TV shows and, upon how some of us can have an interest in those people who are “only looking for attention”... But even though we deny it, the secret truth is that gossip and other people’s lives intrigue and fascinate many of us. Someone has said that a third of all conversations are nothing but gossip. Is that true, or is it just: gossip?

Tell your secret quietly, and let your hand go. Your secret is kept, and you are free to enjoy the secrets of others. Voices from strangers are surrounding every inch of the room, at the same time; your own mind starts to play tricks on you. Why would someone endeavour this? How long can you stay in there? What if ones voice is recognized? How many secrets are there inside the walls? Might one be chocked? Just how curious are you?

XSENSE

Designers: Adam Danielsson, Per Nilsson

Close your eyes for a moment and listen. The steps of people moving about, their voices echoing around you. Someone’s walking down a flight of stairs. Elsewhere, laughter can be heard. You see all this in your mind’s eye, without ever opening your own. Without sight, your other senses fill in. As you read this, your peripheral vision is telling you who just walked past and how far you are from them. From experience you know how close you are to the wall behind you. This is what your unaided vision tells you. What would happen if you relied on what you hear to be your sight? Blind people do this every day. What would it be like if the things around you echoed back to you, screaming and singing about how near or far they were? Wearing XSense, the sounds from outside turns into a synaestete's colorful vision. And the environment you normally see turns into a sonic landscape. You must trust your mind's eye to describe this new world around you. Will you let go of your fears and venture into it?

URBANFOREST

Designers: Markus Appelbäck, Håkan Carlsson, Staffan Björk, Eddy Svensson, Linus Lundahl

or some minds, the forest is a landscape of enjoyment or pleasure, a place that triggers emotions never found in our stressful urban environment. What’s the magic? Is it the blend of sounds just above audible levels, mixed with the surprise element of sounds that could send a shiver done our spines or instantly wake us from the hibernation mode of our minds? Is it the smell of the fresh air, the flowery fields, the stale smell of the bark of a decaying tree, or the year old grass of the meadows gently letting its dewy nightgown fall? It might be all of these; it might be none of them. The most probable conclusion is that it is up to the investigator, the observer, the life living the environment. What this project is about is capturing some of the essences just described, move the environment closer to the urban man. It’s an urban forest! Shaped to create a place for people to experience, to interact, to communicate, to relax, to annoy, to find new excitements, enemies or friends. Unshaped to its content, uncontrolled, free of interpretation, and able to have its own language depending on the setting it is located in and the users interacting with it. While being a forest it is also an instrument, able to play the sounds of the surrounding environment. Each tree triggers different sounds according to how they are being touched, and every tree is one part of a big instrument which sounds have been given to it through the users themselves. Each tree of the forest is a gigantic microphone and recorder. The users are free to take a tree with them, collect sounds of the environment around the forest to add to the sounds of the instrument. The sounds could then be played in sequences added by previous users or played through wandering the forest touching the objects. The URBANforest is an installation meant to dissolve the border between urban and nature, or make people rethink the possibilities of their man made environment. By using abstract forms of treelike objects found in our urban environment we aim to find a way to open up peoples minds for the landscape that surrounds them every day. What is an urban forest? Is it the smell, the lights, the steel, the traffic and ever increasing number of people in motion? What kind of objects might be found in a place like this? Above the crowns are swaying gently holding the vital leaves to our communication society. How could we make the urban forest reflect the life living it, as much as a real forest does?

RE-MEMORIZE

The main idea behind the concept is the old game Memory where you collect pairs of cards with the same image on. The one with the most pairs win. It is a simple game that requires that you remember a picture and a position. Re-memorize have the same structure but exclude the visual part and work with another sense instead, sound. We live in a time of constant overflow of visual communication, anywhere we go images throw themselves over us, so in a way our visual sense is very well trained. Memory is, by many, seen as a pretty challenging game, but imagine the increasing level of challenge when you need to your memorize sounds instead of images. The game will naturally be suitable for people with low or no eyesight. Re-memorize will appeal to all people that like games and competition no matter if you have perfect eyesight or are completely blind.