Created by André Rangel and Anne-Kathrin Siegel, Syndyn is a physical game but also a visual environment where the players control all the audiovisual events that occur in the space/time of the game. They perform a live show and simultaneously produce a database of light drawn images.

The space where the event takes place is colored with light which is controlled by players movements. Their rackets and arms are decorated with electro luminescent wire and the shuttlecock (speeder) with a bright LED, providing vivid dynamic scenic effects.

In the beginning of each game, users choose on an iPod ™ touch device a soundscape associated with visuals and colors for the ambience lighting system. Syndyn rackets are equipped with sensors that detect each hit of the speeder. A radio transmitter system broadcasts the sensors data to the central processing unit (computer). The hits on the rackets are accompanied by synchronous real-time synthesized sounds, by an instant change in the ambience light color according to the previous players choices and by real time generated visuals.

In addition to this real-time audiovisual response, players can also take a visual memory of their game. A long exposure photographic camera covers the playing area. This camera registers the traces that represent the trajectories and movements of the lighting speeder, the lighting racquets and the lighting arms. The resulting drawings of light, can be automatically printed with photographic quality paper and offer to players. These images are automatically stored in a database that feeds a web photo gallery.

Literally the possibility of drawing with this game, gives Syndyn its original and innovative character: being simultaneously an artistic, sports, and entertainment event that merges aesthetics, physical activity, technology and entertainment.

via gamescenes.org

Created by “fishing for compliments“, ”Nemore” is a garden, consiting of 36 bendable graphite poles. “Nemore” senses the visitor. Each pole has a behavior and reacts to it’s neighbours and to the visitor, the “alien neighbour”.

Does a system arise from the poles behaviour, that we (the observers and the visitor) perceive as angst, curiosity, nervousness, etc.? Each pole has a distinct sound, that builds up a chord, fluctuating in resonance with the movement of the poles. “fishing for compliments”

Max Kickinger describes the setup: The poles are driven by two servo motors – one rotates the pole, the other one pulls up a coil with a fishing line attached, bending the pole. The garden is controlled by six arduino mega, a computer runs vvvv for the server application and pd for the sound. Sound works as simple additive synthesis made out of 36 sine oscillators. No sound is played, when the garden is in the “center-position” – only the irritation of the poles generates a modulation of pitch and amplitude: the wider the bending of the pole – the louder the according oscillator will sound. Pitch works in either ways – up and down.

“fishing for compliments” are Jan Bernstein, Max Kickinger, Woeishi Lean, Sebastian Neitsch; working in the fields of: kinetics, interactive design, media design, product design, sound design and music.

More images of the installation are available here.

(Thanks Max)

Durchsehen, Exp. 01 (augmented perspective) is an installation by Daniel Franke ( daniel-franke.com ) and Markus Kison ( markuskison.de ) which includes a camera fixed onto the concrete cube sculpture that recognizes the presence of human faces within its scope. By random selection, the c++ application focuses on the bystanders and adjust its rotation; tracking the eye movements of the viewer. The software computes the corresponding angle of view projecting onto the cube the very section of the space the sculpture is blocking from the viewers eye; thus making the cube appear transparent.

The video sculpture „Durchsehen, Exp. 01 (augmented perspective)“ overwrites the common notion of perspective and plays with the significance of perspective in an art historical perspective; the work of art evades the gaze of the viewer or rather: the two are equated. The gaze of the observer coincides with the object of observance in a piece that also draws a line to former strategies of dealing with vision and depiction: the renaissance praxis of “painting on glass”. Through the real-time projection on the cube a 3dimensional depiction of 2dimensionality occurs; the catoptric turns dioptric. The framing plane of the conventional video image becomes fragmented as work and reality intertwine in an augmented perspective.

Set-Up:
D-2010. Concrete cube, PC, 2 projectors, webcam, servo motors, microcontrollers, C++ applications, tripods. 4 x 4 x 2 m.

sound: Jose G. Soler
Developed during a resideny at .HBC Berlin

Project page here and here + making of here.

Created by Dave Young aka henderson, Radius Music combines ideas of cartography and graphic scores as a means to produce sound. The device is an autonomous revolving machine that reads a distance value in real-time between itself and another object. As the machine slowly rotates and scans the room, it takes this radial distance and outputs it as a relative sonic frequency and a corresponding visual score.

The synthesis techniques used to generate the audio include Frequency Modulation and Additive Synthesis, with phasing effects providing a procedural rhythmic element. The circular rotation of the piece evokes an idea of early sample culture – each device plays a loop of sound approximately 3 seconds long, sampling the position of people and objects in the space. Two devices are situated in the room, documenting sonically and visually the dynamic real-time readings taken from the rotation ultrasonic distance sensors. As people walk in and out of the room that these devices will be placed in, they will alter the readings of distance, and therefore, the sounds too.

view sourcecode

Built using Arduino, PureData, and Processing.

Radius Music

Henderson is a new media artist currently based between Dublin, IRL and Den Haag, NL. He works with electronics, sound and architectural ideas in order to create generative and interactive situations. He has finished his final year of study at The National College of Art and Design, Dublin, and has completed writing a thesis titled Generative Systems: Authorship, Obsolescence and Production in Brian Eno’s 77 Million Paintings.

Niu Miao and Nicholas Hanna met while they were working at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. The idea developed from an earlier project, “Candle Stool”, by Niu Miao which explored an inverse relationship between a light-bulb and a candle.

In this installation the light from a candle is a continuously variable field that emanates from a point outward. The team enclosed a candle in a box covered with sensors. The sensors sample the light from the candle and are connected to corresponding cold-cathode light tubes in the space behind the box. At any given moment, a three dimensional cross section of the light from the candle is detected by the sensors and then amplified to fill the space of the room. The sensors invert the scenario where the shadow from the candle is translated into light in the room. This allows users to “create light” by moving their hands around the candle.

The artists designed a sensor element that embeds a photoresistor and electro-mechanical relay with a voltage comparison circuit. Nicholas writes that it allows for an extremely fast reaction time to changes in light from the candle and a fluid interactive experience. More than 3 km of wire, 182 sensors and a corresponding number of light tubes were used to complete the piece. See video.

For more information on the project, see nicholashanna.net

(via TriangulationBlog)

Interpalazzo, a collective of media artists, Martin Hesselmeier, Andreas Muxel und Carsten Goertz teamed up with composer Marcus Schmickler to create an autoreactive installation; Revolving Realities.

The installation plays with our sense of reality by continually causing us to perceive and experience a place and an object in new ways. Its surfaces projected with different images, textures and animations, the object becomes a mirror of changing realities. As a result, a kind of real virtuality arises to confront virtual reality. A modular light installation issuing from the sculptural object reworks the space. Cords of light pass through the 600 m2 of surrounding space, intertwining the surrounding area with the centre. Ideas are seized upon and returned; the space is transformed into a sound box that enters into a reflexive dialogue with the sculpture. The object, the space and the beholder form a communicative unit

Curated by Mike Meiré, the installation is the latest instalment in the Dornbracht Edges series featuring projects in which architecture, design and art intersect.

See more behind the scenes images here.

links:
www.meireundmeire.de
www.interpalazzo.com
www.piethopraxis.de (Marcus Schmickler)

Photography: Hartmut Nägele, Uwe Spoerung, Tim Giesen

Kit Webster writes:

Enigmatica is a work in progress exploring new concepts in combining light, sound and space to create multi-dimensional synesthetic environments. The work experiments with spatial segmentation, illusory oddities and aural expression, freely shifting from order to disconnection and sweeping through the spectrum of colours from softly subtle to psychedelic. By constantly reforming the dynamics within the space, the installation demonstrates the potential for creating new forms of digital sculpture.

Presented at MARS Gallery in Port Melbourne.

More information can be found kitwebster.com.au

(via Saturn Never Sleeps)

// UPDATE 06/10/2010: Enigmatica II video included below.

dataMorphose is diploma project by Christiane Keller at the University of Applied Sciences Würzburg / Germany. The interactive installation projects data into space and visualizes it three-dimensionally using spanned and moving sails in attempt to make data physical and tangible.

The installation includes three ‘displays’ that visualize statistical data, web activities and the current time. The coding and procurement of data is visualized by the tension of the canvas, the pace of movement, the position of the canvas and the change of their shape. Because the spanned sails are constructed out of tripple curve structure, any new position the viewer takes results in a different viewpoint making new aspects of the data visible.

You can get more information on each display as well as background to the project by visiting the project site.

Made with Processing and Arduino.

Framework f5x5x5 is the latest installation by Brussels based LAb[au] transdisciplinary studio in basilica of Denis Saint in Paris. Inspired by a methodology used in software development, f5x5x5 is a multi compositional structure that exists as both a low resolution display and a generative and interactive sculpture.

The 375 aluminium frames, equal the maximum installation resolution, constitute the framework, consisting of five 2x2m modules each divided into 5×5 regular elements establishing a matrix of 5x5x5 = 125 nodes. Each node has 180ø vertical and horizontal rotation freedom operated by total of 250 servo motors. The frames are lit with LEDs on their visible edges and at the base of installation there are 50 infra red sensors creating a 6m deep sensing matrix and responding to peoples’ presence and direction of movement.

We asked Jerome at LAb[au] about the inner workings:

The software is basically a collection of utilities for calibrating motors and sensors, and monitoring the network activity. The software is written in C and Blitzmax, a language that we find useful for rapid development while not scarifying stability and ability to go to low level coding (one can import C into it, so extending the language with custom libraries or C code is no problem). The software is multithreaded so that input, output and network sync have all their own thread, tasks are this way performed quite fast and smooth, so no glitch in sensor reading would interfere with the motor’s position updating for example.

F555 is composed of 5 modules (of 5 x 5 frames) , each modules has one computer (Intel Atom powered), the OS is installed on a Compact Flash while the software is on a USB key, so we can update the software simply by swapping the usb key. No keyboard, mouse or screen, the whole can be administrated remotely via VNC and a wireless router. So the 5 modules/computers are synchronized over the network.

On each computer there are 2 SD84 cards for driving one module … equivalent to 50 motors (cheap RC models servos), 75 led circuits and 20 sensors (10 Sharp IR digital distance sensors and 10 Sharp IR analog distance sensors). Two modified PC power supplies are feeding these boards at 5V, 8 Amps each.

We build this installation ourselves, including aluminum work, machining and soldering, construction of Plexiglas led boards/diffusers and mounting/cabling…and that was quite epic! (See poster-3 and cabling plan too).

For more information on the installation and very detailed text on the thinking behind the project check out the project page.

Founded in 1997 and based in Brussels, LAb[au] mainly creates interactive artworks, audiovisual performances and scenographies, for which it develops its own software and interfaces. Its four members (Manuel Abendroth, Jerome Decock, Alexandre Plennevaux and Els Vermang) also run since 2003 a digital design gallery, ‘MediaRuimte’, in the centre of Brussels.

(Thanks Manuel)

Amphibious Architecture is a floating installation in New York waterways that glows and blinks to provide an interface between life above water and life below. It was developed by the Living Architecture Lab at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and the Environmental Health Clinic at New York University, and it was commissioned for Toward the Sentient City by the Architectural League of New York.

Two networks of floating interactive tubes, installed at sites in the East River and the Bronx River, house a range of sensors below water and an array of lights above water. The sensors monitor water quality, presence of fish, and human interest in the river ecosystem. The lights respond to the sensors and create feedback loops between humans, fish, and their shared environment. An SMS interface allows citizens to text-message the fish, to receive real-time information about the river, and to contribute to a display of collective interest in the environment.

Find out more at thelivingnewyork.com

Instead of treating the rivers with a “do-not-disturb” approach, the project encourages curiosity and engagement. Instead of treating the water as a reflective surface to mirror our own image and our own architecture, the project establishes a two-way interface between environments of land and water. In two different neighborhoods of New York, the installation creates a dynamic and captivating layer of light above the surface of the river. It makes visible the invisible, mapping a new ecology of people, marine life, buildings, and public space and sparking public interest and discussion.