Make Your Choice!
by Monika Fleischmann e Wolfgang Strauss, Mars – Media Arts Research Studies (Germany, 2002)
“Make Your Choice! is an installation that offers a range of videos highlighting projects from the MARS Lab. The name – Video Jukebox – plays on the traditional Wurlitzer music box, one of the first interactive automatic entertainers. The cubic form of the installation harks back to Mario Bellini’s particular TV set of 1969, the Brionvega Black ST 201. It is a prototype of an interactive ambient environment connected to the World Wide Web. The challenge Make Your Choice! featured in the name prompts users to become interactive by controlling and selecting a video by simply pointing to it.
This interface brings the interaction process into the realm of consciousness, and does away with limiting ‘interactivity’ to the click of a mouse. The physical space is filled with an invisible electric field, which responds to the electrical capacity of the human body. The interaction therefore demonstrates the universality of this fluid electronic medium. The gesture-based interface is a state-of-the-art development by the MARS Lab, which is based on the principle of electric field sensing “, Monika Fleischmann e Wolfgang Strauss.
33 Preguntas por Minuto (série Arquitectura Relacional Nº 5)
by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Laboratório Arte Alameda (Mexico, 2001)
Lozano-Hemmer has been working on interactive installations in public spaces for five years, in a project he calls Relational Architecture. The artist transforms emblematic buildings through new technologies, including projections, sounds, 3D sensors, and robotics.
33 Preguntas por Minuto is a small piece – one could say its dimensions are almost intimate. The starting point is a computer program that uses grammatical rules to combine words from a dictionary. The software puts out 16 million different random questions, which are presented at a rate of 33 words a minute. The time frame guarantees legibility, but it is not long enough to allow the viewer to reflect. For Lozano-Hemmer, western culture has reached a point of saturation in terms of the information available, so all such data is rendered useless. The piece is made up of 20 LCD screens. A keyboard allows visitors to enter their own questions and comments in the automatic data flow.
Learn more about interactivity, a central concept to some breeders of the art technology.
Info.Table
by Kei’ichi Irie, Iamas – The International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences (Japan, 2001)
“What would happen if the elements of which our everyday life consist, such as equipment , furniture, walls, floors, and structures were equipped with functions related to calculation and networking? There would be a possibility of turning our living environment itself into an interface for information. We expect such change would influence the way we work, communicate and what our community is. Yet , a book in Info.Table is completely different from conventional books and can retrieve living information as well as static information through an interactive interface.” artist Kei’ichi Irie.
Learn more about interactivity, a central concept to some breeders of the art technology.
Remain In Light
by Haruki Nishijima, Iamas – The International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences (Japan, 2001)
“We collected pieces of analog communication electric waves with an ‘electronic insect-collecting kit’. It is a system with an ‘electronic specimen box’ in which viewers can observe these waves.” artist Haruki Nishijima
The artwork was located at the Sé’s subway station in São Paulo
Close
by Iain Mott, Experimenta Media Arts (Australia, 2001)
“Close developed in response to the death of a friend in 1998 and on viewing his body. I was, somewhat inevitably, powerfully struck by his absence – he was clearly elsewhere. I decided to produce a piece that would facilitate a meditation on death using conflicting phenomena associated with two methods of representation: spatial audio and the moving image.
Close is a multi-screen video projection installation that blurs the separation between viewer and subject by means of 3-dimensional sound. The viewer wears headphones and hears sound from the perspective of the subject. Close portrays a haircut as a kind of death. The hairdresser, in a gradual erasure of the subjects features, removes hair and eyebrows with scissors and razors. The viewer inhabits the body of the subject as if watching his or her own disappearance. The shared ritualistic experience explores territories of death and loss.” Iain Mott, artist.
Meet other works that deal with immersive virtual spaces.
Talk Nice
by Elizabeth Vander Zaag, Banff New Media Institute (Bnmi) (Canada, 1999-2000)
Talk Nice analyses declarative sentences in which the pitch rises at the end of a statement as an upism (pitch going up at end of sentence). Upism, amplitude, word rate and pause detection as well as gender define the speaker’s relationship to power. The game play is structured through cooperation and inclusion. The participant is the performer, the experience is one on one although others may lurk and look.
The installation makes us aware of inflections and social posturing that we are unaware of in day-to-day communications. As the viewer/user, you begin a conversation with two videotaped young women who are insistent on using the compelling power of upism. Through interaction, you gradually learn to master the software and to encourage it to like you by liltingly using upisms.
Kidai Shoran
by Ralph Ammer, Joachim Sauter and Tobias Schmidt, Art+Com (Germany, 2000)
Kidai Shoran means literally “Excellent View of Our Prosperous Age”. Over a length of 12m, the hand scroll depicts the then most important shopping street of Edo, modern-day Tokyo, around the year 1805. More than 1000 people and animals as well as nearly 110 restaurants and shops illustrate everyday and social life. An artist unknown created this all-encompassing panorama of Japanese society during the Edo period. An interactive CD-ROM offers new approaches to experiencing the narrative hand scroll.
Five “guided tours”, each with its very own perspective, introduce the user to the hustle and bustle on the street, which its about 700m in length and flanked by two bridges.
customer: Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz
concept and design: Ralph Ammer, Joachim Sauter, Tobias Schmidt
programming: Ralph Ammer, Stephan Huber, Tobias Schmidt
Avenida Paulista – 1919
by Itaulab Team (Brazil, 2002)
The artwork is a virtual recreation of Paulista Avenue in the year 1915. Itaulab is responsible for the project, which includes research, 3D modeling, and software development. A work-in-progress version is available for special demonstrations at the Emoção Art.ficial exhibit, in August 2002. This virtual tour is multi-user, accommodating up to 10 visitors at a time, and employs 3D stereo glasses. Each visitor chooses an avatar (a virtual representation), with historical clothing, and is able to interact with other visitors. The 3D reconstruction of Paulista Avenue is based on Itaú Group’s photographic archives of the city of São Paulo.
This work explores the possibilities of virtual recreation with graphic realism. Itaulab intends to direct this line of research towards education, and create virtual tours of historic places and events.
Descendo a Escada
by Regina Silveira, Itaulab (Brazil, 2002)
The origin of Descendo a Escada lies in interest in exploring vertiginous spaces built from a distorted perspective. In configuring those distorted and virtually profound environments, theal has been to dwell on the supposition of the existence of abysses below the ground.
For this reason, the different sets of stairs I have conceived with said intentions, in the past few years, can be experimented as a vertigo of the eye and a virtual walk downward to lower levels, which are implied in the perspectivated representation.
Descendo a Escada is the virtual and interactive execution of the downward path into the dark space below the stairs. In this new piece, the downward experience is an interactive action, made possible through the control of the rotating and centripetal movements of the digital model, according to an animation which uses as main axis the vertex of the three planes where the staircase is projected.
In Descendo a Escada, the user penetrates the plans in perspective of a four-story spiral staircase. The plans unfold as the user “walks down” the stairs to the sound of paces of other people – who are not present – going down at other levels.
Executed by Itaulab as a program for synchronized video-projection in three planes, and with sound recording by Paulo Hartmann and Eduardo Verderame, Descendo a Escada gathers and updates the same principles – technical and operational – as those of the three dimensional representation of Escada Inexplicável 2.
The movement and the interactivity that set both projects apart also allow for the perception of the abyss, which was optical and straightforward, to become gradual and experienced on a step-by-step basis within an amplified sensory field.”
atist: Regina Silveira (The artist was honored by the Ocupação Project. Go and see her work with architecture, video art and technology).
software development: Marcos Cuzziol
3D modeling: Nelson Multari
sound: Paulo Hartmann e Eduardo Verderame
Place Ruhr
by Jeffrey Shaw, ZKM Center for Art And Media (Germany, 2000)
In this installation a rotating platform allows the viewer to rotate a projected image within a large circular projection screen and explore a three dimensional virtual environment constituted by an emblematic constellation of panoramic locations and cinematic events.
The work presents a virtual landscape containing eleven cylinders that show particular sites in the Ruhr area. The viewer can navigate this 3D space and enter these panoramic cylinders, inside each of which a surrounding cinematic sequence fills the projection screen and presents a 360 degree pre-recorded situation and acted event.
The identity of each of the eleven sites is defined by its environmental scenography (both actual and composited) conjoined with the time based events that have been staged there.
On the platform there is a column with an underwater video camera. This device is the interactive user interface, its buttons and handling allow the viewer to control his movement through the virtual scene as well as cause the rotation of the platform and of the projected image around the circular screen. A small monitor within this housing also shows the ground plan of the virtual environment with reference to the user’s location there.
A microphone on top of this interface camera picks up any sound that the viewer makes, and this causes the release of continuously moving three dimensional words and sentences within the projected scene. Originating in the center of the screen, the physical arrangement of these texts in the virtual environment is determined by the path of the viewer movements while they are being generated. These texts have a temporal five-minute life span; becoming more and more transparent until they disappear they constitute traces of the viewer’s presence there.
Learn more about interactivity, a central concept to some breeders of the art technology.
Artintact
ZKM Center for Art And Media (Germany, 1994-1999)
From 1994 to 1999, the ZKM presented pioneering works of interactive media art in the book-with-CD-ROM package entitled artintact. Digital art is still inseparably linked with the question of whether and how it can survive the rapid advancements permanently undergone by its basic technical material. In order to guarantee the continued viewing and enjoyment of the “virtual museum” built up by artintact, a complete edition of the magazine is now being presented on DVD-ROM. It features original interactive works by fifteen artists who were resident at the ZKM.
credits: Flora petrinsularis, Jean-Louis Boissier
Web of Life
by Michael Gleich, ZKM Center for Art And Media (Germany, 2002)
Web of Life artwork allows viewers to interact with an audio-visual environment by their imparting to it the unique patterns of their individual hand lines. The process symbolizes the action of connecting oneself to a network of relations. This audio-visual environment is formed by a conjunction of projected three-dimensional computer graphics and video images. Interaction is effected via a hand scanning user interface.
This artwork is configured as a distributed network of installation – one large-scale environment situated permanently at the ZKM, and four others designed to travel around the world. User interaction at any location communicates with and affects the audio-visual behavior of all the installations.
Learn more about interactivity, a central concept to some breeders of the art technology.
original concept: Michael Gleich
overall project design concept and management: Jeffrey Shaw and Michael Gleich
Cyborg Sex Manual
by Piotr Wyrzykowski (also known as Peter Style), Wro Center for Media Art Foundation (Polonia, 2000)
“We live in times of immense scientific and technological progress which creates new conditions for our contacts with the world. Technology continues to change the world, and – although many things came to pass, it is not the end of the whole run: transformations will get even more fast-paced. These transformations exert enormous influence on human psychology, mentality and physiology; they also put their pressure on human bodies and interrelationships. The changes were so overwhelming and complex that many of you, without being aware of the process of transformation, attained cyborg status.” artist Piotr Wyrzykowski (also known as Peter Style)
Spatial Sounds (100dB at 100km/h)
by Marnix de Nijs and Edwin van der Heide, V2_Organisation (Nethelands, 2000-2001)
Spatial Sounds (100dB at 100km/h) is an interactive audio installation by Marnix de Nijs and Edwin van der Heide. In this engine-powered installation, a speaker is mounted onto a rotating arm that is several meters long. Like a watchdog, the machine scans the surrounding space for visitors. Closer investigation would be tempting fate, with the rotating arm swinging so powerfully round. You hear the impressive sound of the mighty motor revving up, turning faster and faster. You can feel the displacement of air as the speaker whizzes past you, and you had better step back, out of reach. The machine slows down and, when the shock wears off, you start exploring the space, with your movements manipulating the sound it produces. Just don’t get too close! Spatial Sounds (100dB at 100km/h) builds up a physically tangible relationship with the visitor, since it is the game of attracting and repelling between machine and visitor that determines its sound and movement.
Learn more about interactivity, a central concept to some breeders of the art technology.
Locationn: Simultaneity, Time and E/motion
by Sarai/Csds/Raqs Media Collective (India, 2002)
When day begins in São Paulo a night begins in New Delhi. On a global scale – awakening and exhaustion, love and grief, hunger and joy are all emotions that occur at the same time, in different places. The hands and faces of clocks, expressionless and neutral though they may be, can be read as if they registered and calibrated a gamut of emotions through the global night and day.
Locationn proposes to place clocks, computer terminals and a set of video projections on to the floor space to offer the visitor a meditation on simultaneity, time and e/motion. Each of the clocks would be labeled with a specific city’s name – like New Delhi or São Paulo – and would be running at the time in these cities.
On the face of the clocks instead of the numerical notations for time, would be words such as – HOPE, DESIRE, PANIC, JOY, FATIGUE, LOVE, TERROR, GRIEF, PLEASURE, HUNGER, PAIN and ALARM, that connote different emotional states. So that when it is five minutes to PANIC in Sao Paulo, it could be two minutes to DESIRE (in another time zone).
WAR/WART
by Francesc Abad, Mecad (Espain, 2002)
The initial focus on a nazi concentration camp allows the viewer to interactively discover both the “voices of culture”, with their supreme exponents – T.W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, Franz Rosenzweig, Hans Jonas, Nelly Sachs, M. Horkheimer, Jurgen Habermas, Hans G. Gadamer… – and the images of culture. The central theme consists of the different forms of power and their social-political consequences, such as totalitarian regimes, and their effects on culture and on discourse (represented by the real voices of several philosophers). Thinking implies using the organs of the word. Contemplating things from the point of view of others calls for silence; one needs to sit waiting for the word that has not been said. The objective of the piece is to retrieve the voice of culture so that everything can be rethought by each generation, and so that language does not become a means for bureaucratic routine or for empty discussions, rendered ineffective by the “politically correct” bias.
Bonn/Sankt Augustin
by Monika Fleischmann and Wolfgang Strauss, Mars – Media Arts Research Studies (Germany,2002)
“Make Your Choice! is an installation that offers a range of videos highlighting projects from the MARS Lab. The name – Video Jukebox – plays on the traditional Wurlitzer music box, one of the first interactive automatic entertainers. The cubic form of the installation harks back to Mario Bellini’s particular TV set of 1969, the Brionvega Black ST 201. It is a prototype of an interactive ambient environment connected to the World Wide Web. The challenge Make Your Choice! featured in the name prompts users to become interactive by controlling and selecting a video by simply pointing to it.
This interface brings the interaction process into the realm of consciousness, and does away with limiting ‘interactivity’ to the click of a mouse. The physical space is filled with an invisible electric field, which responds to the electrical capacity of the human body. The interaction therefore demonstrates the universality of this fluid electronic medium. The gesture-based interface is a state-of-the-art development by the MARS Lab, which is based on the principle of electric field sensing “, Monika Fleischmann e Wolfgang Strauss
Kogler Cave Piece [Ars Box]
by Peter Kogler, Ars Eletronica FutureLab (Austria)
Ars Box is a portable cave for PCs. For several years the Ars Electronica FutureLab has concentrated on developing systems based on low cost gaming technology. A huge amount of tools and products were tested and requirements were stated in order to develop, use, and improve applications in the fields of art, research, and technology.
One research effort was set into the development of a PC based cave system. The general focus lies in replacing the High End Computers and specialized hardware by a cluster of Linux PCs and commodity hardware components, without losing any of the advantages or performance of the high-end system.
technical consulting, development: Horst Hörtner
8 Custom Electronics Pieces
by Jim Campbell, Daniel Langlois Foundation (Canada, 1999-2001)
“I do basically two sorts of works. The first Iluminated Averages is a modular system I have been working with for about eight or nine years. I plug different modules into the system and connect them together to create a new work. For example, I might plug in two analog-to-digital converters (A/D converters) and then connect these to a programmable image-processing module with a memory module linked to it. Finally, the image-processing module would also connect to a digital-to-analog converter (D/A converter). When the work is installed, the cameras or DVDs would be plugged into the input of the A/D converters while the final video monitor or projector would be plugged into the output of the D/A converter. The second type of work I do (Ambiguous Icons) involves designing a unique non-modular circuit board for a series of works that all have a similar electronic structure. These works have an identical electromechanical structure, but the hardware can be reprogrammed and the image can be reprogrammed into Flash Memory (the same kind of memory used in portable digital still cameras).” Jim Campbell, artist.