Interactive Art at the Science Gallery

After an enjoyable day in Limerick at the Tweak Festival (article below), I was treated to some more interactive art/installations in Dublin. On Friday, 19th September (19 - 21st September), The Science Gallery opened ArtBots, an event exhibiting robotic art and art making robots. The exhibition boasted 15 unique and varying exhibits, ranging from a rubix-cube solving robot, who successfully solved the puzzle in under 40 seconds, to a 20-foot long, sound generating, spring steel band that emulates the onset of a storm.

"Once purely cerebral experiences are transformed into tangible experiences" - 'What It Is Without The Hand That Wields It'.

A personal favourite was Riley Harmon's 'What It Is Without The Hand That Wields It'. This installation consisted of a Counter-Strike server linked via a micro controller to blood-transfusion bags containing fake blood. When a player is killed in the game, a signal is transferred to electronic solenoid valves in a particular bag, and blood is spilled onto the floor. What I like about Riley's work is that he makes the gaming experience more tangible to a player or viewer. If a player kills, or is killed, they are often so far removed from reality that the player doesn't think twice the actual act of killing an, albeit computer generated, character. Riley's work makes for literal bloodshed. I spoke to him briefly at the event and was stunned to hear that he received negative feedback from the computer game industry who claimed that his work was 'pretentious'. I can't say I agree. I can understand why computer game manufacturers might be concerned with people suggesting the ethics of their publications are in doubt, but I don't believe that this project is intended to highlight moral issues. I think it's more based on heightening the experience of the viewer or player, engaging other senses, making it more physical.


'Telematic Drum Circle'

Another interactive art work I'd like to mention was by electronic artist Byeong Sam Jeon. His work, 'Telematic Drum Cirlce', consisted of a number of drum and percussion instruments, manned by pneumatic air control valve robots, which would react in real time to a user's control via the web. Telematic Drum Cirlce allowed internet users to collaborate via this website to create and partake in an improvised, online music collaboration.



From Wednesday 24th - Sunday 28th September, Trinity's MSc Multimedia Systems hosted their graduate exhibition for 2008. The event

My choice of the lot was an interactive, touch screen installation named 'Drawings of a Floating World', pictured above, by Tara Carrigy, Néill O'Dwyer, Colin O'Sullivan and Scott Wade. Made of 3 infra-red touch screen interfaces, the installation surrounded the viewer creating a truly immersive environment. The graphic work was created using Java-based Processing and the viewer interacted by brushing an optical-fiber paintbrush over the screen, triggering reactive animations. One of my favourite parts of these installations is watching the public take part in the installation and this work succeeded in engaging an enthusiastic crowd. Information on the event can be seen here.

It was a nice finish to a rather Interactive Art packed week.

Tweak: Interactive Art & Music Festival

I managed to get the chance to make it to the Tweak Festival held in Limerick City last Friday. Tweak is a festival dedicated to promoting the use of technology as an artistic tool in society, aiming to explore its "social, economic, psychological, aesthetic and functional" potentials. The event ran from Monday, 22nd September through to the 25th. The festival held workshops, talks and live events across the University of Limerick, Limerick School of Art and Design and Limerick City club, Trinity Rooms.

The event was organised by Limerick based, MSc Interactive Media and Music Technology graduate, Nora O’ Murchú, who is now researching her Phd in the same field. An interview with her can be read here.

The event boasted a line up consisting of France Cadet, Digital Slaves, Area10Media La, John Bowers and Limerick based Soundings amongst others.

On the Friday I attended morning (ColourSound & Desaximundi) and afternoon (Digital Slaves) workshops on how to use VVVV, an interactive art and video synthesis tool, commonly used for live musical visuals and interactive art installations. VVVV provides a higher level of abstraction from coding. The user manipulates nodes, which become interconnected, working as input parameters and return values - eliminating the need to explicitly write code. It would be similar to what we would expect to see in a 3D packages node hierarchy and I'm guessing that this is how Softimage XSI 7's ICE programming technology works.

The event seemed to have gone down well. The workshop scheduled for the Wednesday; Michael Gurevich and Peter Bennett's Designing Stylistic Interactions was booked up and both morning and afternoon events I attended boasted promising numbers. O'Murchú didn't commit to future events, but Tweak succeeded in more than just getting the ball rolling. The Interactive Art scene in Ireland seems to be taking off and it would be a shame for this to be left as a one off event. I think it would be hugely beneficial to get more people participating and get a core interactive art community established across Ireland which could help promote and support similar events taking place in cities around the country.

Above photograph of interactive installation by Peggy Sylopp - http://www.generative.org/
VVVV on Vimeo

My Flickr Updated

I've finally managed to update my Flickr page here...

I came across some street art by an artist by the name of 'Eelus', who's work can be found on South William St and just off George's Quay... His two-tone stencil work is very reminiscent of another prominent street artist...
Also up is more lovely Maser work on Andrew's Lane Theatre...he also did work on the interior which is worth a gawk. And the "You Are Beautiful" stencils which can be seen all over the place...

Nintendo outprofit Goldman

"According to calculations by the Financial Times, the average employee at Japanese video games maker Nintendo is on track to earn more for their company this year than than the average Goldman Sachs employee did in 2007, the investment bank's best ever year." - Financial Times

I came across this in Tuesday's (16th Sept '08) Financial Times. To my amusement, they report that Nintendo's employees will potentially create $1.6million per employee head, compared to Goldman Sachs, where each employee are looking to accumulate $1.24million per head.

Nintendo are enjoying the results that investing in widening their consumer scope with the Wii and DS and these profits show that. However, while the the Goldman Sachs average employee took home $626,000, the average Nintendo programmer took home $90,900, with the rest going to shareholders.

METAMORPHOSE 08

I came across this article in trusty PINGMAG.JP.
Metamorphose is a Techno and Art Fesitival in Shizuoka, Japan, just south west of Tokyo. This years festival included a wide range of reactive and interactive light installations to complement the rave environment. The concert visuals look amazing and the lighting displays at the event seem incredible too. I'd love to have seen it first hand. I looked into the use of visuals as a part of my thesis and Final Year Project. That demo can be seen further below. Above is the link to the pingmag article and this is a link to the festival's myspace page.

The above photograph is taken from the festival photos on the myspace page...

Design VS Programming

I'm currently working on an essay which will look at the role of artists and programmers. Maeda, whose TED talk is above, was a professor at MIT's Medialab before joining the Rhode Island School of Design earlier this year. Maeda strongly believes that there is a shift in human's preference for HUMAN generated art, as opposed to technologically created material...this is the guy who supervised the creation of PROCESSING, the JAVA based interactive art software.

I'm sceptical that there will be a complete shun of technologically created work, but agree that the development of work will become more balanced between art and technology.

It will be posted next week, hopefully.