Interactivos? Mexico'08: Technologies of Laughter Selected Projects

Final list of selected projects

 

Catty CPU Cliques

by Jenny Chowdhury (New York, USA)

 

 

Catty CPU Cliques predicts a future conspiracy of computers that alientate the human workers through their own humour and laughter. The installation will be composed of two computers positioned beneath desks in a setting similar to an office. When the humans leave the area of the desks, the monitors go blank and move together to tell jokes that they have found on the internet (or have generated algorithmically) and laugh between themselves.

http://jennylc.com/interactivos/

 

i.m.pshovr (2008)

by Max Kazemzadeh (Denton, USA)

i.m.pshovr is an intimate and public experience that encapsulates each of our weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and failures in one humbling gesture of being pushed over. “i.m.pshovr” seeks to magnify symbolically, the gesture of pushing another person down, to gradually arrive at some slight semblance of empathy. It is an interactive piece that involves a computer, projector, webcam and custom software to welcome the viewer to physically interact with a virtual pacing character on screen. Interacting with the character in different ways pushes the character over in different ways.

 

sensitive water

by Carla Capeto (Madrid, Spain)

sensitive water is an aquarium full of “sensitive” water that reacts to touch alongside a series of light animations. The visitor has the freedom of playing with the water and depending on the intensity of the touch, the aquarium will laugh to varying extent, and also at the same time will change the intensity of the luminous animations. The project has various goals: the first is to create the illusion that the water could react to touch as if it was alive; the second is to give human characteristics – like laughter and tickling – to something inanimate; and the third is to use technological manipulations to enable physical contact, and to create something playfull.

 

Moyote I

by Christian Saucedo Rodríguez (Mexico City)

 

Moyote I is a piece of work that records images of the participants and projects them back to emulate their walk. The piece, which also incorporates the use of text, monitors the participant through a computarized segmenting system. When the participant crosses a certain point within the space, the system activates the piece, afterwhich, mysteriously the image of someone else follows them.

 

Absurdity Tracker

by Jacqueline Steck (Treviso, Italy)

 

Absurdity Tracker is a piece of work in which the visitor rather voyeuristically looks through a peephole within a box in order to see absurd imagery. Through the use of an eye tracker, it reveals what the participant was looking at and presents this information to others in the space. This project experiments with exposing supposed privacy that the voyeur has in peering into a private space, by revealing what the viewer is fixating upon via a projection visible to others. The basic premise of this piece uses eye tracking in unusual ways to reveal different kinds of data about what draws users' attention.

 

CabulTag

by Jorge Eduardo Benet Sánchez (Cuernavaca, Mexico)

CabulTag is a project that incorporates the use of code technologies QR (Quick Response) that creates links between physical objects and virtual content. The idea will be to satirize cultural symbols of Mexico and the citizens of the capital city.

IEM - Insaciable Entropic Machines

by Rui Pereira (Braganza, Portugal)

 

Insaciable Entropic Machines is a media robot that replies to users with media sampled memories. ILM, is an artificial intelligent machine known as HAL9000 in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. This project closely relates to the humanization of technology, human computer dialogue and the efforts of machines to overcome and comprehend emotional expression and language multiple possibilities of meaning and ambiguity.

 

J.A.-J.A. Jockey Action – Jolly Answer

by Leonor Torres (Madrid, Spain)

 

J.A.-J.A. is a video installation project with interactive sound. The objective of the work is to respond to the question: Can a machine be tickled?
This idea is carried out through the means of a robot fitted with tactile sensors that react to rubbing which translate into laughing impulses through the means of PD codes. To draw the visitor into the work, they will enter a stage set made up of a hospital of robots, and a written document about an emergency situacion. The aim is to give the idea that J.A.-J.A. is a world-wide event. The spectator will be involved in making metal plates laugh and adding humour within the converted space.