Mexican artist Lilia Perez Romero presents her work Frontera v.2 concluding her stay in the Netherlands Media Art Institute. With Frontera v.2 visitors can play with their own portraits. This interactive installation consists of two main components: a video booth and a playback screen. The video booth serves as a tool with which spectators can create interactive self-portraits that are shown on the playback screen and react on movement as if they were dissociated mirror images.

The Portrait - A randomly chosen character observes the spectator from a glass screen. From his pose and the framing of the shot, he seems to be waiting to be portrayed. The character will carry on like this, breathing and blinking, until the spectator touches the screen. Then, he will come out of his immobility responding with the same gesture, placing his hand and gaze on the user’s hand, following any route it follows. Continue reading

RECORDERS, the first solo show in Germany of work by the Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, invites visitors to participate. These are works that only come alive through interaction with viewers. The Edith Russ Site for Media Art is presenting three very recently developed interactive installations (until August 17, 2008) which make it possible to experience physical, acoustic and visual traces left by visitors in the Exhibition by means of digital technologies. Experiential and recollection rooms are created that relate past and present to each other.

In Pulse Room, exhibition visitors’ heartbeats are transmitted to 100 lightbulbs suspended from the ceiling. The interface, a simple metal handle, transmits a visitor’s pulse to a lightbulb after ten seconds. Continue reading

Amalgus Cycle by Laura Zajac is an environment made up of parasitic processes triggered by organic inputs, which permeate and interconnect with organics and non-organics entities, through digital encoding, in a self-sufficient and finite mode. Process 1 is actually the first step towards such environment. The interactive installation tracks the audience movements and maps them out in a multi-cellular colonies form. Human movements are a further input for an organic interaction. Infrared sensors detect the human presence and activate accordingly a set of heating elements. Those elements heat up a container of wax which melts down and start to flow over a slide made out of muslin and paper. Continue reading

SwanQuake is a unique project involving the ongoing making of an interactive artwork comprising 3-D computer graphic environments and motion-capture driven characters created from a variety of materials and methods by an interdisciplinary team gathered together and led by Igloo.

In each of the pieces, using a game controller, the viewer navigates freely throughout the 3D computer graphic environments. The spaces are comprised of both exterior and interior landscapes, each thematically, visually & sonically distinct where users can interact with avatars to create new performances / performance spaces. Continue reading

The International Dance Party, an installation by Niklas Roy and Adad Hannah, is a complete plug ‘n’ play party in a box. Equipped with radar sensing technology, the system can sense activity nearby and quickly transform from an idle box into a psychedelic light and laser dance machine with a 600W sound system that will make the room bounce with excitement. The machine even taunts its audience with ambience with a built-in smoke machine that spews fog onto the dance floor. When everyone has left the room, the machine quickly transforms back to its static state and waits quietly for the next party to start. Watch the video. [blogged by Jonah Brucker-Cohen on Coin-Operated]

lotu5 wrote: I would like to announce this project I am beginning to work on. It is in a preliminary stage, as I am still seeking funding, but I do have early commitments from the Center for Research in Computing in the Arts (CRCA) and from two collaborators, Kael Greco and Christopher Head.

Becoming Dragon: Stage 1 - Overview: I am interested in exploring the question of how technology can facilitate new somatic practices of gender and sexuality beyond male and female and even beyond the limitations of what we consider human. Using a conception of identity and a process of social interactions and feedback loops, I plan to use the online public space of Second Life as the site of my investigation. Continue reading

Chunky Move: Glow :: February 7-9, 2008; 7:30 pm and 9:30 pm :: February 10, 2 pm and 3:30 pm :: The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, NYC :: Co-Presented with The Joyce Theater.

Glow is an illuminating choreographic essay by Artistic Director Gideon Obarzanek and interactive software creator Frieder Weiss. Beneath the glow of a sophisticated video tracking system, a lone organic being mutates in and out of human form into unfamiliar, sensual and grotesque creature states. Continue reading

Message in a Bottle: From Ramsgate to The Chatham Islands by Layla Curtis - On May 25, 2004, fifty bottles containing messages were released into the sea off the south-east coast of England near Ramsgate Maritime Museum, Kent. The intended destination of the bottles is The Chatham Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. The islands, which are 800km east of mainland New Zealand, are the nearest inhabited land to the precise location on the opposite side of the world to Ramsgate Maritime Museum. It is anticipated that the bottles may be found several times before reaching the Chatham Islands. Continue reading

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The All Seeing Eye I and II by Radim Labuda - The installation videos are minimal formal re-working of the original military footage downloaded from the Internet. Video showing a landscape in night vision with a crosshair brings to mind many possible previous experiences: video games, images of Afghanistan and Iraq produced by specialised devices to “search and destroy”.

The movement of the camera across the terrain is remapped to a static landscape - as if the viewfinder was revealing only small sections of the landscape at a time. Camera movement is remapped relative to the static objects in the footage. The image is stabilised by motion-tracking technology which allows for compensation for much of the movements of the aircraft. Continue reading