FoAM - Responsive environments

Bitesize lecture with Sha Xin Wei and Harry Smoak

maja — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 17:59:05 +0000

Start: 2004-11-11 17:00 Europe/Brussels

End: 2004-11-11 18:00 Europe/Brussels

A lecture on Media Choreography and responsive architectures at the Topological Media Lab in Atlanta and Montreal.

Structured Growth and Grown Structures

maja — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:53:57 +0000

[tk's:um]

maja — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:43:17 +0000

tgarden

nik — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 13:30:53 +0000

TGarden is a responsive environment, inspired by calligraphy and scrying. In TGarden, the players' gestures are being transformed into generative computer graphics and digital soundscapes, leaving marks and traces in much the same way as a calligrapher would with brushes and ink.

When visitors approach the TGarden, they choose from a range of costumes, designed to encourage particular kinds of movement. Light and voluminous for space-filling, fast movements; tight and restrictive for small, fine gestures; heavy and transparent for slow, meditative actions. In intimate dressing chambres, in addition to the costumes, the players are equipped with accelerometers, sensors able to detect changes in speed and tilt of the movement, an optical device for tracking the players' position and direction in the space, as well as a small wearable transmitter, that will communicate with the software systems 'back-stage'. Once the players enter the space, they are left alone to explore the connections between their bodies and the environment. A swiping motion could send an organic-looking, digital shadow smearing across the floor; walking across the room could sound like swimming with a swarm of invisible, but musical creatures. The sonic and the visual media are layered in textures and meanings, allowing for various styles and interpretations. Even though simple interactions are easily learned, it takes time to get acquainted with the environment's own nature. As an apprentice calligrapher must learn to find a balance between the flow of ink, the pressure of the brush and the speed of his gesture, a player in TGarden slowly learns to write, scratch and dig through the media space, to be able to play it as an instrument...

Together with Sponge, we designed and developed several installments over a two-year period between 2000 and 2001, testing them with audiences across Europe and North America.

Entangling

_pix — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 11:36:41 +0000

There are many worlds and many realities in our universe. When one reality, or one world-view is superimposed on another, it is inevitable that social, economic and cultural problems arise. Hierarchies of worlds are constructs of a bygone era. Ecologies of worlds should guide us in considering our future. We imagine this future to be responsive, adaptive and interconnected. We abandon the static and universal designs of the industrial era and move towards a world of malleable materials, objects and spaces. Where buildings can sustain themselves and replenish their environments, technologies can function as immune systems rather than panic attacks, materials are active, pliant and compostable. A world which all of us can influence and where entanglement and diversity are seen as positive things. We can begin by designing environments that can respond to physical, environmental, or social needs. Not only the needs of human beings, but also of the organisms and elements with whom we share the Biosphere. By accepting that our actions and our futures are deeply entwined with many others, we can glimpse the larger patterns of these connections.

At FoAM, we often work on entangling physical and digital realities. Exploring the relationships between materials and media opens up a wide continuum of 'mixing realities'. In this continuum, we are looking for ways to make digital media more tangible and physical materials more responsive and adaptive. We are looking for ways of giving our environments an ability to evolve, rather than constructing them to always remain the same. Rather than attempting to segment the world in chunks of 'things that are built and static' and 'things that are grown and evolving', we explore them as active and interacting elements of a whole. By designing systems which incorporate the grown, the built and the simulated, we have quickly reached the limits of reductionism and have began dabbling in the world of complexity. We have abandoned the modernist search for simplicity and began looking for clarity. In the process, instead of purity, we found fecundity.