Sun Boxes, by Craig Colorusso, are an environment to enter and exit at will. It’s comprised of twenty speakers operating independently, each powered by the sun via solar panels. There is a different loop set to play a guitar note in each box continuously. These guitar notes collectively make a Bb chord. Because the loops are different in length, once the piece begins they continually overlap and the piece slowly evolves over time. The sounds of Sun Boxes have been described as both soothing and energizing. A unique combination of adjectives often used to describe yoga, or meditation. When experiencing the piece, Sun Boxes allows the participant to slow down, and notice the subtleties of the composition unfold. With the abundance of technology and hustle of this culture it is a much needed concept to not only be allowed, but also encouraged to slow down.

http://www.sun-boxes.com
http://muudmusic.blogspot.com

Fragments of RGB is an interactive Installation experimenting with illusion and perception. The classic LED screen as a medium was simulated and disintegrated by the creation of a pixel-like LED optic with the ability to change and transform with the viewer’s movement and, hence, his perspective and point of view. By Onformative Studio.

http://www.onformative.com

Are We There Yet? is a new media art installation in the San Francisco Contemporary Jewish Museum by Bay Area artists Ken Goldberg and Gil Gershoni that celebrates inquisitive impulse. An immersive sound environment, the installation poses questions from a variety of sources including the Talmud, literature, and popular culture. Questions vary based on visitors’ movement through the space.
Each visit is a unique mix of playfulness, poetry, and spiritual journey. A companion website, are-we-there-yet.org, presents live streams of videos and tweets, allowing visitors to suggest questions for the exhibition and to playfully explore the suggestions of others.
You can also download the iPod/iPad app, follow on Twitter @doyouloveme, or like Are We There Yet? on Facebook. Are We There Yet? encourages visitors to reflect on the rich history and future of curiosity.

http://are-we-there-yet.org

For a limited time in February 2011, KWMC (Knowle West Media Centre), in Bristol, UK, hosted an immersive video installation, which questioned how proximity and distance can affect the way we perceive and interact with other people.
“Who Are You?” has been developed by KWMC’s resident artist Patrycja Cudak. At the opening of the installation, the viewer is asked to choose a character they would like to hear from. As the viewer crosses the installation space and approaches the screen on which the character is projected, the character’s behaviour, dialogue and body language will change. Each viewer will hear a personalised narrative and develop an individual relationship with their character, as a result of the unique movements they make within the installation space.
Patrycja said: “[in] building ‘Who Are You?’, I was especially interested in what happens to us when we make a close relationship with someone and suddenly discover that this person performs some unhealthy habits when no one can see. How do these people create their outer image? How does their performance change when we get closer to them? Can we ever know the truth about a person?”

http://www.kwmc.org.uk

New York director Annie Dorsen takes the famous television debate between the philosopher Michel Foucault and linguist and activist Noam Chomsky from the Seventies as inspiration and material for a dialogue between two specially developed chatbots: every evening, these computer programs designed to mimic human conversations perform a new – as it were, improvised – live text.
Hello Hi There is a performance without people – a literal expression of post-humanism, and simultaneously an examination of what it means to be human. The piece goes inside the question of human nature and intelligence, both the organic and the artificial.

http://www.ps122.org/performances/hello_hi_there.html

Capacities is an installation by Stanza. This artwork gathers data from the city (environment) this is then made virtual and then this virtual city is represented as this electronic city. A manipulation of data, that ‘powers’ all the ‘events’ ‘actions’ and ‘processes’ in the installation.The changing data creates; all the changes one experiences in the space. The moving objects, fans, changing lights, motors, noises, that you encounter in the gallery are all responding to changes in temperature, light, pressure, noise, and the sound of the environment and the city outside.

The whole gallery space becomes one large artwork made from real time city information and data. The aesthetic and feel of the space looks like an electronic city. The city is made of units, grids, repetition , building blocks. In the gallery city called ‘Capacities’ the leads, the wires,and cables are incorporated into the artwork to look like a city map.’ Capacities’ looks “designed” like a piece of urban design, a city surveyed and controlled. The whole space becomes a map to wander through.

http://www.stanza.co.uk/capacities

One Hundred and Eight, by Nils Völker is an interactive wall-mounted Installation mainly made out of ordinary garbage bags. Controlled by a microcontroller each of them is selectively inflated and deflated in turn by two cooling fans.
Although each plastic bag is mounted stationary the sequences of inflation and deflation create the impression of lively and moving creatures which waft slowly around like a shoal. But as soon a viewer comes close it instantly reacts by drawing back and tentatively following the movements of the observer. As long as he remains in a certain area in front of the installation it dynamically reacts to the viewers motion. As soon it does no longer detect someone close it reorganizes itself after a while and gently restarts wobbling around.

http://nilsvoelker.com

The eCLOUD is a dynamic sculpture inspired by the volume and behavior of an idealized cloud. Made from unique polycarbonate tiles that can fade between transparent and opaque states, its patterns are transformed periodically by real time weather from around the world.
It is a permanent sculpture between gates 22 and 23 at the San Jose International Airport and was a collaboration between Dan Goods, Nik Hafermaas, and Aaron Koblin.

http://www.ecloudproject.com

Life Across Words, by Rachelle Viader Knowles, is a 24-channel synchronized video installation. A creative response to Georges Perec’s novel Life A Users Manual, an experimental, conceptual game of a book, where the narrative travels from room to room within a fictional Parisian apartment building. Life Across Words consists of 24 tv’s in the form of a crossword puzzle with 5 intersecting words, each the name of a project participant, who moves through the tv’s that spell out their name, performing an action for each letter. Where words cross, the participants perform an action together. Shot at the Elsewhere Museum in North Carolina, a ‘living museum’ and art centre based on a ethos of ‘play’ as a serious strategy for human interaction, learning and engagement with the material world.
The back end consists of 8 networked computers running quicktime and MaxMSP. Video delivery and synchronization system designed by David Ogborn. Constructed into a looped 30 minute cycle, each cycle begins and ends with images of books on shelves and the whole piece begins and ends as a library.
The exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue with essays by Dr Carmen Robertson and Stephanie Sherman. Project participants: Danna Rooth, Stephanie Sherman, Eliza Fernand, George Scheer and Dan White.

http://uregina.ca/rvk

[via gameart]

Don’t Trip is a multimedia installation by Calvin Waterman that explores the relationship between written prose and illustrated scenarios. In what moment does information become a tangible narrative, how do we build our realities?
The piece consists of five written character outlines each with a corresponding button. When one of the five character buttons is pressed a version of that character’s scenario is chosen from a database of possible outcomes. The scene is projected on to the “stage” which consists of a small white cube resting in the corner. The white cube connects object to character, bringing the illustration into the third dimension while providing a consistent platform for the directing object of each scenario.
The relationship between the written prose and projected scene allows a linear reading. The randomization of the projected scene creates endless narratives. The resulting narratives follow Ben through different steps of his accident.

http://calvinwaterman.com

“Nemore“, by Fishing For Compliments, is a garden, consiting of 36 bendable graphite poles. “Nemore” senses the visitor. Each pole has a behavior and reacts to it’s neighbours only: and to the visitor, of course – the visitor acts an “alien neighbour”.
Does a system arise from the poles behaviour, that we (the observers and the visitor) perceive as angst, curiosity, nervousness, etc.? Each pole has a distinct sound, that builds up a chord, fluctuating in resonance with the movement of the poles.

http://vimeo.com/fishingforcompliments
http://fishing-for-compliments.net

Portrait Machine is an interactive photography installation that visualizes the connections between visitors. It makes these connections based on a number of features, such as clothing choice, hair color, facial expression, and composition within the frame. It presents both similarities and differences in these characteristics, remdining us of our connectedness and uniqueness, creating strong visual patterns and playful juxtapositions.
Portrait Machine was a collaboration between Theo Watson and with Kyle McDonald, and it was produced by Nina Meilof for CBK Amsterdam.

http://www.theowatson.com
http://rpi.edu/~mcdonk/

“My little piece of Privacy”, by Niklas Roy, is a robotic curtain which is too small for the window where it is installed. But since it is robotic and controlled by a laptop (running some processing code which does the computer vision), it detects the location of pedestrians outside and positions itself rapidly to where they are, thus not only blocking their looks inside, but also serving as a playful installation for people on the street. The rapid positioning of the curtain is done with a custom linear servo drive. It is basically a DC gearmotor which is controlled by an Atmega, programmed in AVR-GCC (as the Arduino-style-GCC performed to slow to handle the job). Processing code and AVR-GCC code are both on the page for download, as well as plans and schematics for building the linear servo.

http://www.niklasroy.com/

The computer is programmed to permute every possible combination of binary code in ever increasing places to infinity. The roll upon which a landscape is painted, grows smaller and smaller, turning the world into code.
Everything in the World (1997) is a work by Janet Sweig and Laura Bergman.

http://www.janetzweig.com

Sala de Máquinas (Engine Room) is an audiovisual interactive installation, which intends to reflect on the idea of the reutilization of what we have acknowledged as obsolete…in this case old modified TVs that react to sound. An electronic oscillator is connected to an open circuit, in a way that when the user touches 2 metal bars he/she himself/herself becomes the electrical resistance therefore being able to vary the frequency of sound. The old modified TVs react to this sound as an oscilloscope having all kinds of different patterns and reactions.
Authors: Daphne Polyzos, Jordi Planas, Miguel Neto, Rodrigo Carvalho.

http://www.visiophone-lab.com

[via triangulationblog]

The Conversacube, by Lauren McCarthy, is a small box meant to form the centerpiece of any conversation situation. The box sits in the middle of all conversants, with one face facing each person. Each outward face of the box has a small screen and a microphone embedded just inside. As the conversation progresses, each person is personally prompted with directions or lines to keep the conversation running seamlessly with minimal awkward or uncomfortable moments. The microphones monitor audio levels of each participant and the cube responds accordingly, adjusting prompts to enliven, mediate conflict, or balance conversation as necessary.
The intent is to create a tool that on one hand, is suggestive of an actual commercial product that uses technology to improve interactions, and on the other hand, is critical of our dependence on technology and choreographed social routines, hinting at a dystopic future where we sacrifice our autonomy to avoid having to face anything uncomfortable.

http://conversacube.com
http://lauren-mccarthy.com

Outnumbered, a brief history of imposture (2009), by Jasper Rigole, is an installation that generates a moving image using a found panoramic photograph from 1936. The installation is computer-controlled and generates an aleatoric narrative using an extensive database of people who, in some way, are associated with imposture.

http://www.jasperrigole.com

[via pietmondriaan]

The piece (by Daniel Franke & Christopher Warnow) is inspired by VR-sculptures, though technically and conceptionally transcending the helmet-like “90ies data-glasses”. The basic thought is to re-organise the relationship between “the viewer and the viewed” whose traditional functions are expanded technologically; the starting point however remains set in “real space”.
A portable screen is used to visualise the soundsculpture; a camera attached to the screen collects information of the space surrounding it from markers distributed on adjacent surfaces.
The screen becomes a transmitter superimposing a digital layer -the sculpture onto “real space” (the unmanipulated space that greets the naked eye). The process allows the viewer to abandon the passive position of the “merely on-looking” consumer; he is enabled to visually and acoustically intervene with the sculpture, to model and module it. His changing positions and movements affect the visualisations on the screen, rendering an “extended reality” accessible. The sculpture generated is individually linked to each observer and thus singular.

http://vimeo.com/7893992
http://www.daniel-franke.com
http://www.brian-steen.com/blog/

The Ocean of Light project, by Squidsoup, explores the creative and immersive possibilities of light-based visualisation in physical space. It uses bespoke hardware to create dynamic, interactive and three-dimensional sculptures from light. Surface is the first artwork to be exhibited using the Ocean of Light hardware. It uses minimal visuals and sound to evoke the essence of character and movement. Autonomous entities engage in a playful dance, negotiating the material properties of a fluid surface.

http://www.oceanoflight.net/

The “DIY, plant!” research project (by Sander Veenhof) aims to design a multitouchscreen interface for plants so they can control their supply of water and light themselves by pressing touchscreen-button controls with their leaves.

“For a while how, there has been a rise in the amount of bio-art projects connecting pieces of living nature to mechanical or computerized environments. It is a popular approach in times when digitally there aren’t any limits or boundaries anymore. Everything is possible, and nothing really excites. The involvement of insects, animals or plants into art projects provides new difficulties to solve, thereby re-challenging artists. And their audiences. With spectators becoming largely indifferent to faster or bigger or newer technologies, the touchscreen-plant arouses the attention of an audience because of its contrast to our digitized contemporary world and its ultimate slowness. An upcoming button press could be a cliffhanger of days.

But the “DIY, plant!” project is more than an application of bio-art for the sake of the spectacle. Beyond the visually intriguing form is a bio-art piece focused on achieving truly functional dynamics between plant and technology. Acknowledging the extreme complexity of true scientific biological adaptations of the involved plant, and foremostly, respecting the wisdom that nature does possess, the approach taken is not aimed at changing nature and forcing the needs of a touchscreen onto a plant, but the plant is taken as the point of reference, and the interface is being reshaped and refined according to the plants’ needs.”

read more here: http://sndrv.nl/DIYplant/