The Augmented Hand Series
The “Augmented Hand Series” (by Golan Levin, Chris Sugrue, and Kyle McDonald) is a real-time interactive software system that presents playful, dreamlike, and uncanny transformations of its visitors’ hands. It consists of a box into which the visitor inserts their hand, and a screen which displays their ‘reimagined’ hand—for example, with an extra finger, or with fingers that move autonomously. Critically, the project’s transformations operate within the logical space of the hand itself, which is to say: the artwork performs “hand-aware” visualizations that alter the deep structure of how the hand appears.

Glow
Glow is an illuminating 30-minute choreographic essay by Artistic Director Gideon Obarzanek and interactive software creator Frieder Weiss. Beneath the glow of a sophisticated video tracking system, a lone organic being mutates in and out of human form into unfamiliar, sensual and grotesque creature states. Utilising the latest in interactive video technologies a digital landscape is generated in real time in response to the dancer’s movement. The body’s gestures are extended by and in turn manipulate the video world that surrounds it, rendering no two performances exactly the same.

The welcome chorus
The Welcome Chorus is an interactive installation that brings together sound, sculpture and artificial intelligence (AI). Commissioned by Turner Contemporary for Margate NOW festival, the sculpture consists of twelve horns, each representing a different district of Kent. Each horn continually sings lyrics which are generated live by a uniquely trained, site-specific piece of AI software. Symbolically and aesthetically, these sculptural forms reference the origin of the word ‘Kent’; thought to derive from the word ‘kanto’, meaning horn or hook.

Scale
‘scale’ is an interspecies art project: an audience-interactive installation that involves nocturnal electric fish from the Amazon River Basin. Twelve different species of these fish comprise a choir whose sonified electrical fields provide the source tones for an immersive audiovisual environment. The fish are housed in individual tanks configured in a custom-built sculptural arc of aluminum frames placed around a central podium. The electrical field from each fish is translated into sound, and is thus heard — unprocessed or with digital effects added, with immediate control over volume via a touchscreen panel — through a 12-channel surround sound system, and with LED arrays under each tank for visual feedback. All software is custom-designed. Audience members interact as deejays with the system. Amongst the goals of the project is our desire to foster wider public awareness of these remarkable creatures, their importance to the field of neurological research, and the fragility of their native ecosystem.The project leaders comprise visual/conceptual artist Marlena Novak, composer/sound designer Jay Alan Yim, and neural engineer Malcolm MacIver. MacIver’s research focuses on sensory processing and locomotion in electric fish and translating this research into bio-inspired technologies for sensing and underwater propulsion through advanced fish robots. Novak and Yim, collaborating as ‘localStyle’, make intermedia works that explore perceptual themes, addressing both physical and psychological thresholds in the context of behavior, society/politics, and aesthetics.

Мути Рэндольф
මුටි රැන්ඩොල්ෆ්
মুটি র‌্যান্ডল্ফ
Generative Installation
Muti Randolph lives in Rio de Janeiro and studied Visual Communications and Industrial Design at the Pontificia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro. One of the pioneers in computer art in Brazil, he has been shifting from virtual 3d to real 3d spaces creating sets, installations and interior architecture projects. In his work he explores the relation of time and space through music and interactive generative video using custom designed software and hardware. His projects are present in the most relevant art, design and architecture publications.

timeLandscape woolrhythms

“timeLandscape – wool rhythms” 2010. Part of timeLandscape series, 2009 – 2010. Video, audio, projector, speakers, custom patch (PD-Gem), sensor, wool engine. Variable dimensions and duration, loop. “timeLandscape – woolrhythms” is an interactive audiovisual installation in which a landscape is depicted from its multiple time possibilities and [re]composed through users’ real time interaction. The installation was developed in Biella, Italy, an area economically attached to textile industry, and deals with the cyclical perception of time and human, linear, interference on it. It gathers nature and artefact, by connecting a physical wool engine to digital imagery of daily cycles. By turning the wheel crank, users generate movement starting the engine. Through a sensor attached to the machine, software calculates the rotation speed, altering parameters for mixing audio and video fragments in real time. Every turn of the machine leads to different time thread combinations in response to the rhythm and speed of each interactor.

FILE FESTIVAL

Break Wall Sim
Eyal Gever is an artist who combines technology and art to create sculptures based off of 3D software technology that he uses to produce animations and 3D renderings to compliment his work. Gever has over 18 years experience implementing his ideas into 3D software technologies and server/web-based products, primarily in the area of interactive real time multimedia communication software as well as 3D creation and animation.

Still Life

Still Life is the newest release of interactive art. The project  was created by the American Scott Garner and aims to enable a very different way of interacting with our staff. With it, the task of tidying up the works on the wall can become less monotonous. Garner framed an LCD screen with a rotating base, grouped a motion sensor and connected it to 3D software (which generates images in real time). The result is an interactive work of art; that simulates suffering the effects of gravity. A picture in which, in perfect synchrony, all its elements move.

نوفا جيانغ
Ideogenetic Machine
“Ideogenetic Machine” is an interactive installation that incorporates portraits of participants into an algorithmically generated comic book. A camera captures the portrait live while an algorithm transforms the photographic image into a “line drawing”. Face detection is utilized to insert-code generated blank speech bubbles into the narrative. The software creates never repeating compositions using a set of rules that approximate the compositional decisions made by a human comic book author. The comic is projected live, and consists of the algorithmically processed portraits as well as randomly chosen story elements from a database of drawings. The story elements are drawn by the artist, mostly illustrating speculative narratives based on current news and events. A participant can email him or herself the finished comic as a PDF file.

FILE FESTIVAL

MID AND PLAYMODES
radial and blaus
‘radial’ and ‘blaus’ are two interactive lighting installations, both a result of the collaboration between catalonia-based digital research collectives MID (media interactive design) and playmodes. ‘blaus’ introduces the abstract realm of three dimensional geometry through the mediums of audio and illumination – this could manifest as a cube or a blossoming flower, a grid or a jellyfish, a mutant framework of reflecting lights which submerge the audience into a multi-faceted universe, driven by hidden forces of the architecture. ‘blaus’ is an immersive space where audio-visual elements relate
intimately to impact on the visitor. the process led the designers to build most of the software and hardware elements themselves, by means of algorithm design, digital fabrication techniques and craft handwork. on the hardware side, the use of open source technologies, such as arduino, allowed us to create a flexible electronic system easily addressable by opensound – control data. ‘duration open source software by
james george was used in order to independently control, compose, and play a full score for the laser diodes, servomotors, lights and music.on the sound design side, all music and sound effects are made through the use of audio programming environments such as predate and reactor.
custom digital instruments are made in order to exactly match the resonant frequency of the space and its harmonics.
‘blaus’ is an immersive space where audio-visual elements relate intimately to impact on the visitor.

Symphony in D Minor

‘Symphony in D Minor’ is an interactive sound and video installation on an epic scale. A thunderstorm contained within a series of large hand cast resin sculptures, each individual form is a unique instrument hanging from the ceiling. Suspended just within reach and activated by touch, the viewer sets the symphony in motion by pushing the forms through the air to trigger the various sound elements of the storm. Sensors relay individual recordings of thunder, lightning, wind and rain with alternating intensities to a full-scale sound system. Acting as both conductor and musician, the viewer creates an evolving composition out of atmospheric sounds, forging an environment that envelops the audience. Housed within each piece are 2 video projectors employing mapping software to evenly fill the surface of the forms. Like giant illuminated pendulums each sculpture radiates video projections that in their dormant state display abstractions of water droplets and slow moving clouds. As the sensors detect movement different ranges initiate more visual elements of the storm. Once activated, the form then shifts to a swirling torrent of clouds.