Green Screen SFMOMA



Transition SFMOMA



White Screen SFMOMA



ASCII Noise



Transition



Green Screen


Sensing Speaking Space, 2002



The snows that crown the peak of Fuji
Melt on the mid-June day
And that night it snows again.

Takahashi Mushimaro in the Manyoshu


"Sensing Speaking Space", is an interactive installation that focuses on the notion of the "intelligent space", a space that knows you are there and reacts to the presence and movements of multiple spectators sensed through a custom camera tracking system. The image is projected on a large screen, the sounds are spatialized around the audience through a 6 channel surround-sound based on their locations in the gallery.

The visualization consists of the play between the noise, randomness and order, through multiple layerings and subtle changes that build up over time and in response to spectators movements. There is a back and forth transition between two images that is produced dynamically as a consequence of the spectators' actions. The first state is a textured image surface continuously being covered by white visual noise, like film dust, or snow falling on a windshield. The noise is made up of ascii characters that must be wiped away by the spectators' movements to activate further events. Enough action must be generated so that the transition to the other state is possible. The second state is a green blurred image, from which readable texts are drawn to the surface through the spectator's movements. The audience's movements advance the events from one to the other evoking metaphorical acts of "wiping" and "breaking through" in the white noise screen mode to "bringing forth" and "revealing" in the green text screen mode.

The sound consists of several layers (drone, singer, water sounds, bells, speakers, etc.) with variations for each of the two visual states. The vision program send messages over a network to a SuperCollider program that controls the sound synthesis and mixing.

The work is intended to focus on reflexion and self-realization of one's presence. It is an abstract work meant to be contemplative like a Japanese garden. Technical contribution for "Sensing Speaking Space", include Gilroy Menezes for motion sensing, and Gary Kling for OSC communication. This project was realized in Macromedia Director, OSC and Supercollider.


Exhibitions
ISEA Conference Exhibition, Nagoya, Japan (October 2002)

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, "Activating the Medium" festival co-ordinated by David Prochaska and Randy Yau, (February 2002)



George Legrady, Professor, Media Arts & Technology graduate program, University of California, Santa Barbara. His work in interactive installation focuses on interaction design, and data management through semantic categorization using neural-net based algorithms. www.georgelegrady.com


Stephen Travis Pope
is senior researcher/composer at CREATE, UC Santa Barbara and lecturer in the Media Arts and Technology program. From 1988 through 1997, he was editor-In-chief of "Computer Music Journal," MIT Press. www.create.ucsb.edu/~stp/

Andreas Schlegel is an interface designer currently in the masters program at MAT, UCSB. He co-founded and directed the visual and technical production in the "Diffus" design firm in Stuttgart, Germany. www.sojamo.de



 



 

Speakers SFMOMA

Backstage SFMOMA

Camera SFMOMA