Monthly Archives: October 2012

A Ship to the Other Side of Time

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I embarked on a ship that crossed the waters. It took me away. I could see the city vanishing in a progressively distant glow. We passed by Liberty, garbages, boats and huge metal girafes walking along the shore in the horizon. The bay was colored in a rainbow of grays, browns and glossy blues. The wind was refreshing although coming from an unknown direction, changing its course every minute. When we reached the center of the bay, I no longer felt the desire to watch the disappearing city we had came from. Its magnetic skyline had suddenly lost its gravity force. I turned around and had a glance at the horizon. Through the buildings I could see it. The opening towards the sea. The smell of the eternally troubled reached us. I was no longer closed to the city, I was heading towards another land, closer to the edge.

The ship docked at what looked like an abandoned port. A place where nothing really exists but everything passes by. A space where nothing remains still but where things are carried away in an eternal transition status. Walking out of the ship felt like entering a dormant no man’s land. I could see buildings and houses but not sign of life. No emotional attachment to the structures. Like if the human beings inhabiting the premises did not bound to their land. Streets were empty. Houses were quiet. Cars were parked. I wondered aimlessly for a while. Entered a shop selling goods from another world. Back on the street, I followed the sidewalk line in search of a place to sit and rest. It led me towards a very calm street where shop windows were barricaded. It was hard to tell if shops were still trading but closed or if they were definitely abandoned. Some men were sitting on staircases guarding the stillness of life.

At the end of the street I saw a sign. The Book Cafe it said. I noticed the piles of books and old encyclopedias on sale and displayed outside, and walked in. It felt like I was far away from the city of millions. The place had this country side vide that makes you feel home. Things were out of place. There were books everywhere. Vinyles. Cassettes. Dust. People were sit on old school sofas, hanging out and reading. Enjoying a biscuit or a cafe. It felt like I was away from where I was only 25 minutes ago. That I was now in a place with no time. In a time zone outside the city frenziness.

My trip to Staten Island made me realized water is a strong boundary. Twenty minutes on a Subway is not the same thing as twenty minutes on a boat. Even is Staten Island is a borough of New York, it is not like the other boroughs. It is so far away in time and space. People living there are in a different time zone. And The Book Cafe is the perfect place to feel that impression of being far away. Of embarking on a trip that leads you to nowhere else than to yourself. Surrounded by your thoughts or great old school music. Staten Island vibe and the Book Cafe made me want to write literature.

Cross the water, walk in the void for a while, find the cafe, enter and chose a random vinyle to play. Enjoy.

 

They were all wrong
For the Earth is not round

The ship will lead you away
Far from the shores
And across the waters.
To the outer limit of time
and the edge of the land.
They have already gathered there
Those vagrants who fled
Away from the giddiness
Distant from the uselessness.
In this place dust has value
Old becomes new.
They have kept them safe
All the artifacts of old age.
If you bring the music key along
You will hear a sound
that will bring you back to the time
when waves were round.
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208 Bay Street  Staten Island, NY 10301
(718) 447-8256

Physical Computing’s best pattern? Using daily life simple gestures

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For the last years, I have seen tons of art installations using the same type of technologies stated in the blog post ”Physical Computing’s Greatest Hits (and misses). The interactive art scene in Montreal is pretty active and creators use various forms of physical computing approaches.

Collaborative installations
The interactive art pieces I found the most compelling are those inviting the users/public to collaborate to produced meaningful content. Not only the user has to get involved, but he also has to observe others and construct his experience according to the actions of the others. The best example is the project 21 balançoires by Mouna Andraos (an ITP graduate. It is because of her I am here, so thank you Mouna) and Melissa Mongiat.

The swings are installed in the spring at the main downtown public square. Pedestrians are invited to swing and create music. The swings are equipped with sensors. Once you picked a swing, you can produce a sound by swinging high or low. The swings also produce sounds when then pass by another swing, or if they follow the same rhythm of another swing. This means, you can make sounds on you own. But if you collaborate, you can actually make music. People spend hours swinging with friends or strangers. The whole installation sounds like a concert.

Bringing people together
Interactive art and physical computing are great ways to have strangers connecting to each other, interacting. With 21 Balançoires, the simple gesture of swinging becomes a social experiment. This is what I like about interactivity: creating interactions between humans. Too many interactive installations allow to interact with technology only. I guess they are meaningful in a way, but to me, the point of using physical computing device is to use them as a tool to have people reflect on their relationship to others. With physical computing, we can transform daily life contexts into something new, an experience that forces you to connect with society.

Interacting with objects
In 2011, I had the chance to work on Barcode.tv, an interactive documentary exploring our identities through objects surrounding us. It is pretty simple: using the website or the iPhone app, you can scan any barcode of any object. Then, a 1-minute film related to the category of object you picked is shown to you. In addition to the website and iPhone app, the creative team I worked with created an installation. Here is a timelapse I created during the three days it took to set it up for the first time:

The installation is great. The public is invited to take the objects and to put them on a socle which has microchip reader in it. Then a film related to the object is shown on the barcode screen. Even thought there is no collaboration between humans in this installation, I really liked it because it made you feel like the objects where talking to you.

Daily life as a trigger to interactiveland
What links 21 Balançoires and Barcode.tv is the fact they use a daily life setting to produce an interactive context. Swings are used by everybody and anyone is able to pick an object. Interactive storytelling can be really strong when it is embed in the public daily lives. Like the tone stairs at Pompidou Museum. This is where it becomes challenging: using physical computing in a way that is easily readable by users. A pattern I have seen to often is using technology to create something foreign to the users who get easily lost not knowing how to use the thing or how to behave. I do not have examples to show here, but I will try to remember some installation I did not like (I guess  this is why I do not remember them).

So, the key to me is: transforming a normal and simple gesture into something extraordinary. That is the best pattern.