It was nice to see again Paula, Ricardo and of course Daniel and Samuel. I would have loved to stay longer in São Paulo, but I think I made the best of my 6 days there. I met some amazing people and had the chance to see behind the scenes of some great projects. I did not have time to see a lot of the city, but I still got a sense of the size of it.
I also got my hand on the two last catalogues of FILE Festival. These catalogues include Presence [aka Soft n' Silky] I presented at FILE Rio 2009 and currently running at FILE 10 Nurbs in São Paulo.
Here are some photos of FILE Rio from a friend of mine, Rodrigo Torres.
Until the 19th of April, Presence [a.k.a Soft n’ Silky] will be shown at FILE RIO 2009 – Electronic Language International Festival. – hosted at the Oi Futuro Cultural Center. Our trip to Rio was great. The FILE people were amazing. They put together a really nice exhibition with some really interesting works.
This photo is by adnanref_alm. You can see more photos of this event here.
Here is a small video of the tests before the opening. The video quality is not great. I was too busy running around …but there is always next time (like Sao Paulo?).
Thierry and I had a paper published in the ACM Digital Library. We submitted the paper for the ACM Multimedia 2007, in Augsburg Germany. Our poster was a part of the “Art, Content, Applications” poster session held on the 26th of September.
The paper “Performative Surface: Double Sided Interaction” is a short presentation of the interaction framework we worked on last year. This research/framework focuses on the relations that occur between co-located individuals mediated by an interface with a goal to help to emphasize the intensity of interaction by way of a two side responsive surface. We have applied this framework to two of our projects to date: Soft n’ Silky and collectiveShadow.
collectiveShadow is an interactive event that utilizes electronic shadows as raw materials and paints them into an architectural spatial form. The responsive environment explores the organic connection of human actions in an interactive collaborative environment by encouraging people to become both physical and social aspect of the participatory installation.
Project Team: Maxime Bergeron, Hugues Bruyère and Jason Safir.
In collectiveShadow, shadows immaterial form symbolizes a representation of distinct individuality. The interdependence of persons within the environment establishes a conscious and unconscious relation between one another by the means of diffused shadows, silhouettes. Representing the participant’s physical presence as data rather then tangible objects exposes a unique sense of body, self, and representation. The defamilarized social interaction collectiveShadow generates, creates a meaningful distinction between collective and individual shadows. The interacting of mere shadows investigates the individual’s conception of social identity and representation in a new light.
Presence [a.k.a Soft & Silky] is an interactive installation in which users are invited to engage, through motion and touch, with the tactile interface itself and other users. This installation is based on a simple, inexpensive, and scalable setup/technique enabling a range of movement from multi-touch to full body sensing on a double sided performative surface.
Presence project is particularly interested in the role of human effectual choreography in a physical environment and regard the importance of the reciprocal influence between multiple human interactions and architectural space.
With the use of the double-sided interactive wall, the Presence installation focuses on the idea of building an interface that calls upon humans to use, perform, and to engage in the poetic of space. In this space, the users have a direct experience with human interconnection – flesh to flesh and flesh to digital- creating a container for them to rethink their immutable monumentality of physical construction.
By removing the barriers to personal interactions and exploring the encounter of bodies and digital artifacts, Presence piece has taken step back toward to flesh to flesh communication and increase authentic wholistic interaction.
We believe that the concept of double sided interactive surface has a lot of potential as conceptual framework to explore and to use for triggering creativity and designing interesting interactions in fields such as performance, design, and public intervention/space.
Presence is the first, in a series of interactive pieces that will explore the concept of double sided interactive surface. Future technical work will include improving the computer vision processor to gain in accuracy and in tracking capabilities. In addition to these elements, we hope to implement a speech input and treatment with the intention of creating another layer of interactivity, and augment “The bandwidth of reality”[David Rokeby].
The choice of a soft and silky wall interface highlights the sensual and intimate experience for the users. This tactile quality is definitely an interface elements that we wish to explore further in the future. We observed that the flexibility/malleability of the surface had considerable impact on the users’ awareness of their interconnectivity with others touch. The elasticity of the membrane gives a 3D aspect to the interface surface and can be manipulated in more interesting ways than a hard 2D surface.
