May 10 & 11 5pm-9pm
Spring Show 2005
721 Broadway
at Waverly Place
4th Floor
South Elevators
New York, NY 10003
For additional
information email
itp.inquiries@nyu.edu
or call 212.998.1880
| Digital Babylon | ||
|---|---|---|
| Author(s): | Joan Soler Adillon | |
| Instructor: | Zurkow, Marina | |
| Class: | Final Project Seminar | |
| URL: | http://jsoler.net/prs/digitalbabylon/index.html | |
| Digital Babylon is an installation in which the visitor\'s presence alters the work\'s computer generated ecosystem. | ||
| How can we create an interactive piece that establishes a visual dialog with the visitor, both contemplative and participatory, that goes beyond the single, immediate response we usually find in ideo-tracking based works and installations? I intend do demonstrate that basic concepts of artificial intelligence and live systems emulation can enrich interaction between the piece and viewer beyond the simple action-reaction relationship.. | ||
| Personal Statement: | Since I started in this program, programming has produced on me a strange fascination. At the same time complex and simple, the language of computers is an extremely powerful tool in the hands of artists, but one usually has the feeling that something is missing in the highly technological charged works of art.
Cameras are used to track our position, to reproduce our image and manipulate it on a screen or projection, all through the different languages that computers speak, in which we are reduced to dots and colors. But as in any field, what is important and makes any piece interesting are the concepts that lay behind it. The effort to take one more step on this direction is what I called go beyond the mirrors, in reference to the form of a lot of the works we constantly see at ITP. Any computer program can be reduced to a more or less complex set of rules. The programmer arbitrarily decides what the user will have to do in order to make it work. In this direction, I would like to explore the possibilities of these sets of rules to give to the program some sort of intelligent response to the viewer, understanding this intelligence not as emulation of human intelligence but one that can be coherently proper to an interactive work of art. Having each of the elements of the work react to the current participant and at the same time evolve depending what each one of them does will create a more complex interaction that can be more engaging to the visitors. In this direction, I’d like to try to integrate on such a piece an idea that has been fascinating me since I started programming: create a piece where the interaction of each one of the users is integrated and lingers in one way or another in the work, making each visitor a part of the creation process of the piece. | |
| Background: | Various artist that have worked with video as the input to create art pieces: Myron Krueger, David Campbell, Zachary Booth Simpson, Dan Shiffman, Camille Utterback
-This will be my thesis context paper, with the addition of works that have explored evolutionary programming and recreation of natural habitats | |
| Audience: | Visitors to an art gallery. I expect that only people with patience and curiosity will enjoy the piece, by combining short interactions with contemplation of the effect it produced on the whole system | |
| User Scenario: | The user will be in a room, with a projection on the front wall where the garden will be seen. Moving around a certain space in front of the piece, his/hers actions will affect the garden immediatelly and effect the echosystem that lives there. The user will immediatelly see that his/her actions are reflected on the piece, but only some time of contemplation will give an idea of the overall effect they produced to the garden\'s inhabitants | |
| Technical System Description: | Programmed in Processing (Java) the graphical representation of the garden will be projected on a wall. A video camera will track the users in the designated space and transmit the information to the computer for it to be represented too.
Once they enter the designed space, their position will be represented in the digital garden for them to explore how to interact with the piece. What they do will affect the general evolution of the different species that conform the garden. | |