Commissioned by MAK Museum of Applied Arts and Contemporary Art in Vienna, this project is a collaboration between Bare Conductive, Fabio Antinori and Alicja Pytlewska to create an installation that combines screenprinting, capacitive sensing, interactive tapestries and generative soundscape, as a large-scale metaphor for the idea of breathing life into a textile skin.
The team designed ‘Contours’ as an immersive experience where a series of tapestries respond to the presence of interacting audience when they are in contact with the skin of visitors. The constantly modulated data-driven soundscape is composed in real time and serves as an acoustic feedback loop that alludes to the relationship between science and the body. Sound modulation uses granulation and pitch shifting of samples prerecorded from tools usually employed to measure human body such as CT and PET scans, EKG plus various oscillators. The abstract geometric decoration that connects the tapestries’ individual sensors to form giant ones was inspired by Wiener Werkstätte designs from the MAK Collection (below).
The engineering part behind is mainly based on a Touch Board created by Bare Conductive which is using capacity sensing. The boards are still experimental and are about to be produced by Bare Conductive for the market, following the successful Kickstarter campaign.
3 Touch Boards by Bare Conductive programmed in Arduino, are controlling 30 sensors screenprinted by K2 London with Bare Conductive Electric Paint on the 3 tapestries made out of Tyvek sheets. A custom code written in MaxMSP generates the soundscape by reading weather related data from yahoo weather; the code modulates different part of the soundscape in relation to the level of interaction happening on the tapestries and in response to the readings from the 30 sensors. The sensors are the longest ever attempted through screenprinting Bare electric paint on Tyvek; they are 1.6mt long by 10cm wide. Non conductive paint was then screenprinted on top of the sensors to produce the final graphic effect.
All Touch Boards by Bare Conductive are connected to a Mac Mini via usb cables; the same computer is playing the patch written in MaxMSP.
Bare Conductive | Fabio L Antinori | Alicja Pytlewska
