Gravity – Interactive installation @ Utopia, Bordeaux from 2Roqs on Vimeo.

Gravity is a collaborative application using buildings’ architecture as a projection surface. It won The New Technological Art Award Foundation Liedts-Meesen in 2010.

This real time interactive animation allows people to send sms text messages to the installation. The words are then embedded into geometric shapes, and are dropped from the top of the projection. The fall as well as their collisions with the building’s environment are physics-driven, making interactions happen between the different sent messages.

The words are stacking, accumulating, rotating thus creating a structural and spatial “cadavre exquis” both related to the building architecture and the projection. Bystanders become actors of the installation itself, and are playing a role by customizing their messages with punctuations, long words or simply by answering other people’s messages.

The application benefits from a specific sound environment, created by Splank Studio. The geometric shapes apparitions, falls, collisions trigger sound events, whose volume is set by the words’ length (ie its “weight”). The sounds are short, dynamic, spatialized and enhance the visual interaction with the building. Its stereophonic diffusion immerses spectactors and enlightens the poetic and playful nature of the installation.