Liquid Crystal Environment

Liquid Crystal Environment is made using heat-sensitive liquid crystals that are placed between glass slides and inserted into projectors. The slides are rotated to create movement within the liquid, and as the crystals are heated and cooled they change colour. The patterns produced within the various slides are then simultaneously projected onto screens around the exhibiting space, all under the control of a computer program.

Mindscapes
The BR41N.IO Hackathon brings together engineers, programmers, physicians, designers, artists or fashionistas, to collaborate intensively as an interdisciplinary team. They plan and produce their own fully functional EEG-based Brain-Computer Interface headpiece to control a drone, a Sphero or e-puck robot or an orthosis with motor imagery. Whenever they think of a right arm movement, their device performs a defined action. The artists among the hackers make artful paintings or post and tweet a status update. And hackers who are enthusiasts in tailoring or 3D printing give their BCI headpiece an artful and unique design. And finally, kids create their very own ideas of an interactive head accessory that is inspired by animals, mythical creatures or their fantasy.

Samplingplong
File Festival

Randomly selected, acoustically usable finds (electronic junk, relays, plastic toys,compressed air valves, pneumatically operated components) are combined with cables and tubes. Via a device controlled by computer, they are turned into interactive instruments. An improvised ensemble evolves, from which – per mouse-over and mouse-click -short miniature compositions of dense rhythmic clicks, hisses, whirs, hums and crackles can be elicited. A tapestry of sound bursts forth from the floral-like web of cables and tubes. The installation can be used by the projected mouse-cursor: rolling over the improvised instruments causes small sound events. Activating the installation by rolling over its parts enables the user to play spontaneous improvisations. Clicking these objects starts short programs of loop-like compositions. Small “techno-compositions en miniature”, rhythmic patterns of analog (or real) sounds; a physical low-tech simulation of electronic, digital music, perhaps an ironic comment on interactivity.

CellF
“CellF is the world’s first neural synthesiser. Its “brain” is made of biological neural networks that grow in a Petri dish and controls in real time it’s “body” that is made of an array of analogue modular synthesizers that work in synergy with it and play with human musicians. It is a completely autonomous instrument that consists of a neural network that is bio-engineered from my own cells that control a custom-built synthesizer. There is no programming or computers involved, only biological matter and analogue circuits; a ‘wet-analogue’ instrument.”Guy Ben-Ary

Reality is not Always Probable
‘Reality is not Always Probable’ is constructed from tens of thousands of colourful dice and is generated, line by line, by manually emulating the rules of a simple computer binary program. Its title references a quote by Jorge Luis Borges and men’s disquiet towards a lack of controllable or predictable events and the belief that complete knowledge is impossible.

feel Me tactile interactive bed
File Festival
“feelMe” is a work that for the first time remotely transmits the tactile sensation. Our work provokes the exploration of the sense of touch while promoting the interaction between two people mediated by a machine. The work is constituted of two surfaces, or “beds”: the first one (tactile transmission unit), in which one of the participants, layed down, imprints marks to its surface by pressing it with the weight and movement of the different parts of his/her body; these impressions will be captured and transmitted to the other participant, who lies in the second “bed” (tactile reception unit) and receives them simultaneously in the same positions and in proportional intensities, however, in negative, that is, when the surface in the first bed sinks, it rises in the second one, promoting a touch. The first body touches the second one, and the “beds” may be a few meters or thousands of kilometers apart from each other. Between the bodies, dozens of occult sensors, microcontrollers, engines (lineal actors), computers and a program that orchestrates that tactile communication. We allow the participant to experiment the possibilities of encounter between bodies through the digital world, with a different approach from the one provided by virtual reality. We want to explore the tactile perception separately in its “corporal way”, and only in future works to propose the expansion/extension of multimedia perception with the inclusion of tactile perception.