Case Study - Interactive Installation Art 2

THE KHRONOS PROJECTOR

Khronos Projector is an interactive-art installation that allows people to explore pre-recorded movie content by their interactivity. A classic video-tape allows a simple control of the reproducing process (stop, backward, forward, and elementary control on the reproduction speed). Modern digital players add little more than the possibility to perform random temporal jumps between image frames.

By touching the projection screen, the user is able to send parts of the image forward or backwards in time, thus giving the new way of interactivity equipment for the video playback. By actually touching a deformable projection screen, shaking it or curling it, separate "islands of time" as well as "temporal waves" are created within the visible frame. This is done by interactively reshaping a two-dimensional spatio-temporal surface that "cuts" the spatio-temporal volume of data generated by a movie.

The installation uses a video projector, a large tissue-based deformable projection screen, and a sensing mechanism capable of acquiring in real time the deformation of this tissue. While it being displayed, the public (users) can interact with the video playing on the screen. The entire computer engineering was done in C++ program, OpenGL display and Java to produce the touch effect on screen.

A good part about this installation is that people would be able to try the Khronos Projector on videos they could bring themselves. A color printer may be brought nearby in order to print high-resolution snapshots of the interactive video. So, the users can make their own screenshots and bring them back home.

Basically, the users can use the special touch screen to produce certain effects by just twirling, waving and tapping their hands when the video is playing.

The Khronos Project can become one of my inspiration pieces of artwork for future works and projects. Warping the screen with our own hands is quite a fun and the users can actually experimenting with the video to see the outcome that the users want, without having spending too much time on the video, like if we want to see the water effects on something, we can just twirl the screen without having to ‘edit’ the recorded video.

Also, since the users can print and bring the ‘tweaked’ screenshot effect on the video to home, it can be fun to see the satisfaction of the users after experimenting with the equipment, and that will mean a lot to the inventors who work very well with the project. The feed back they got from this project is that the viewers are satisfied with the effect they can create, but in the same time, they hope they can do something like this in ‘real world’. Although that kind of statement might seems impossible to do, but it lets the people know that the technologies that we have today can throttle through the impossibilities.

Site source: http://www.k2.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/members/alvaro/Khronos/

Case Study - Interactive Installation Art 1

LIGHT DRIFT

LIGHT DRIFT is a collaboration installation art project between the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program and artist J. Meejin Yoon They placed a temporary interactive lighting installation along Schuylkill Banks between Market and Chestnut Streets from October 15 to 17 in the year 2010. The project created a field of lighting elements that drew viewers into a playful engagement with the artwork, the river, and each other.

J. Meejin Yoon used the lighting elements that are shaped like orbs or buoys and equipped with electronics that allow them to respond to a viewer and to communicate with each other. The orbs on land use sensors to detect the presence of a person and relay a radio signal to the corresponding orbs in the water, allowing visitors to transform the lighting behavior and color of the orbs in the river.

As viewers come and occupy the orbs along the park, the grid of lights in the water will interact to the land of where people are crowding the place. Multiple viewers can create intersections of linear patterns that can encourage viewers to ‘play’ with each other. These orbs bring the community together by providing gathering spaces for watching the river turn into a flickering constellation, creating new connections on the river’s edge.

The technology of making the electronic to detect the presence of living life can be a little bit tricky to me, since it involves a very precise electronic tampering to the equipment and lots of trials and errors before a successful project becomes truly appreciated. In this project, it really shows how well the efforts of teamwork, since the artist has made a collaboration with the others.

Plus, this kind of works can bring a lot of people together to have some fun, in the same time appreciating the nature.

Site source: http://muralarts.org/explore/projects/light-drift-0

Case Study - Installation Design Artist

Golan Levin

Golan Levin is an artist, origins from New York, US and was born in 1972. He is also a composer, performer and engineer that interested in developing artifacts and events which explore supple new modes of reactive expression.

He received a bachelor degree in Art and Design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994, and a Master's degree in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab in 2000. Levin received undergraduate and graduate degrees from the MIT Media Laboratory, studied in Aesthetics and Computation Group. He has worked for 4 years an an interactive designer and research scientist at Interval Research Corporation. After graduate at MIT, Levin also starts to teach in Columbia University, Cooper Union, and Parsons School of Design, before he finally accepting a position at Carnegie Mellon University in 2004.

Levin's work combines equal measures of the whimsical, the provocative, and the sublime in a wide variety of online, installation and performance media. There are quite lists of projects and works done by him so far, like:

Dialtones: A Telesymphony [2001]

The Secret Lives of Numbers [2002]

The Dumpster [2006]

Audiovisual Environment Suite [2000]

Scribble [2000].

MARK [2002]

Messa di Voce [2003]

The Manual Input Sessions [2004]

Scrapple [2005]

Ursonography [2005]

Opto-Isolator [2007]

Double-Taker (Snout) [2008]

Interactive Installation Art

Scrapple (2005)

Info from his website:

Scrapple is an audiovisual installation in which everyday objects placed on a table are interpreted as sound-producing marks in an “active score.” The Scrapple system scans a table surface as if it were a kind of music notation, producing music in real-time from any objects lying there. The installation makes use of a variety of playful forms; in particular, long flexible curves allow for the creation of variable melodies, while an assemblage of cloth shapes, small objects and wind-up toys yields ever-changing rhythms. Video projections on the Scrapple table transform the surface into a simple augmented reality, in which the objects placed by users are elaborated through luminous and explanatory graphics. The 3-meter long table produces a 4-second audio loop, allowing participants to experiment freely with tangible, interactive audiovisual composition. In the Scrapple installation, the table is the score. The Scrapple was collaborated with Ars Electronica Futurelab.

After seeing this installation art, I found out that it is kind of interesting to create beautiful sound effects by just placing something on the top of the thing. In this case, Scrapple is kind of like a piano, but with no attached keys. Instead, we make the keys to produce the notes, according to the objects physical and the location or position of where we put the objects.

Since Levin also a composer, it is not a surprised that if he can create a new music equipment by using the same technology as Scrapple.

http://www.flong.com/projects/scrapple/