inForm
is a Dynamic Shape Display that can render 3D content physically, so users can interact with digital information in a tangible way. inFORM can also interact with the physical world around it, for example moving objects on the table’s surface. Remote participants in a video conference can be displayed physically, allowing for a strong sense of presence and the ability to interact physically at a distance.

Eunoia II
It is an interactive performance and installation that attempts to display invisible human emotion and physiological changes into auditory representations. The work uses a commercial brainwave sensor to visualize and musicalize biological signals as art. The real-time detected brain data was used as a means to self-monitor and to control. The installation is comprised of 48 speakers and aluminum dishes, each containing a pool of water. The layout of “Eunoia (Vr.2)” was inspired by an Asian Buddhist symbol meaning ‘balance.’ The motif of number 48 comes from Spinoza’s ‘Ethics’ (Chapter III), classifying 48 human emotions into three categories – desire, pleasure, and pain. In this performance, water becomes a mirror of the artist’s internal state. It aims to physically manifest the artist’s current states as ripples in pools of water.

Network Time

“Network Time consists of several wifi routers set up in an exhibition space to be freely accessed by any mobile internet device. Attached to each router is a slender fiber optic cable, aligned to absorb and magnify the incessant flicker of its traffic LED. The visualized data exchange creates a space viewers can interact with not only physically, but also informationally.” Gregor Quack

Cloud
Liz Nurenberg: “Cloud” My Sculptural objects act as experience stations where viewers can form relationships both to the work and to other viewers. Interactivity allows me to explore intimacy, personal space, and how the body physically connects with something while confusing the line between viewers and viewed. The handmade nature of my work evokes intimacy, suggesting the presence of human effort or authorship. Sound acts as an inner voice, which can create a subtle sense of awkwardness. These touches come together to build a scene where interactions happen and narrative forms.

It Only Happens All of the Time

Constructed by Jacqueline Kiyomi Gordon within San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) new exhibition series Control: Technology in Culture, It Only Happens All of the Time is an installation that shapes sound, movement, and perception. Architectural in ambition, the installation tasks visitors with exploring a room lined with a droning 11.1.4 surround sound system and custom sound-dampening acoustic panels in order to foreground what the artist describes as the “the exchange between moving within the sound, moving within the sculpture, moving with someone else” and yielding an “intimacy” in the process. Borrowing the materials and geometries of the acoustic panels used in anechoic chambers and acoustic testing labs, Gordon’s immersive sonic environment deploys clinical sound design to engender exploration and interaction.Positioned in the centre of Gordon’s space is “Love Seat”, a pair of adjoined enclosures where visitors can sit and listen. While sharing a common sightline—but physically separated—listeners can enjoy a moment together, each within (relative) acoustic isolation. In the essay accompanying the exhibition, Control: Technology in Culture curator Ceci Moss succinctly describes Gordon’s approach as “sound modulating mood” to “both commune and command” those entering the space.As would be expected, Gordon went to great lengths to sculpt the acoustics within It Only Happens All of the Time and the exhibition saw her working closely with specialists at Meyer Sound Laboratories. She touches on her process briefly in the video below and the Creator’s Project post on the project is worth delving into, as it provides some worthwhile ‘making of’ details as well as comments from collaborators Jon Leidecker (aka Wobbly) and Zackery Belanger.

New Tangible Interfaces TTI

Interactive surfaces makes everyday objects multi-functional and fun. Reactive technologies have now enabled normal interfaces with new functions and new possibilities. The role of the surface is changing radically, according to how it’s designed and incorporated with objects. My proposal was to re-define the role of the surface in future lifestyle, exploring how surfaces can be an integrated as part of a product or environment.

TTI, (standing for Tangible Textural Interface) is a new sound system that embeds a tactile surface. TTI has flexibility that enables people to physically touch and feel the response through the controls and physical morph of the surface. TTI delivers new aesthetics through integrated flexible surfaces as interface material unlike adapting conventional materials for interfaces such as plastic or glass. Unlike existing 2D interfaces, TTI has a curved 3D surface opening up new possibilities in making flexible forms and shapes within the interface.

TTI consists of 3 main functions, backwards and forwards, volume control and equaliser, having a physical feedback and control interface within one surface. As you control the functions, the left surface physically responds to the controls. Tactile surface also responds to the beat of the music.

McNicholas and Barney Steel
Laser Forest

The public can explore the space, physically hitting, shaking, pulling and vibrating like trees for trigger sounds and lasers, provoking a very interactive collective experience. Resulting from the natural elasticity of the material, an interaction with the trees created with which they oscillate, creating patterns of vibration of light and sound. Each tree was tuned to a specific tone, creating harmonious children spatialized and played through a powerful surround sound system, and the more people, the cooler the experiment. The facility was designed to bring out in adults the feelings of curiosity and awe that are so vivid and evidence in children.

Comprised of hundreds of translucent panels and shape-memory wire, Reef utilizes an interface fed by an RGB camera and special software to create an installation that responds to its audience. Choreographed in curling combinations that express both mechanical and natural examples of motion, the work physically reacts to a range of programmed criteria. Criteria can vary from simply the location and proximity of a participant to qualities such as the color of clothing, or whether participants are alone or in groups. The result is an animated environment which explores behavioral possibilities within soft, fluid motion and interaction. Once passive viewers are transformed into engaged users through this dynamic platform, which amplifies the relationship of inhabitants to their built environment.