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I played around with those initial ideas and it was all to obvious, more like some bad video game, this ties right back to what I don’t want to do, I don’t want to fit right into someone’s ideas of what computer generated art might be, oh its an immersive video game, games are for kids, this game is crap etc.

Walking in to a room of colour can be a very powerful thing what I would prefer if stepping in to a Mark Rothko painting (yes I was excited by Rothko last year I still am, maybe from years of growing in a houses where all the wall were white (My father though white was better as it wasn’t a problem when repainting – not that we ever did)) (wow brackets in brackets you can tell I like math/programming more than english/punctuation/grammar ).

So more subtle (not the colour just the structure)

Currently thinking of it as multiple nodes, each node (an individual mic) could be represented as hill in the landscape undulating and changing colour based on the input, erupting into waves of light connecting nodes as the vibrations move from one node to the next, the node would be represented visually on the walls near to the placement of the mic so heading towards it would create more movement.

Very excited my Arduino kit arrived, only one day after ordering. I got it up and running in no time, flashing leds, turning of an on leds with pressure switches, even switching a tri coloured led through all its colours.

But could I get it to talk to flash ?
Eventually (but only because I am incredibly stubborn and don’t know when to give up) I found a solution to get it all working not because there were none to be found just there were many that may have once worked but no longer did, and they were all multipart solutions so trying to work out which bits went with which was incredibly frustrating. But 1 full day and night later I finally had it working, and in no time built a couple of quick tests.

I created a game where you flew though a tunnel using presure (or light) to control vertical position.

An other where you moused over an image and the tri coloured led turned the colour of the pixel under the mouse (Well close to that colour, it would need a fair bit of tuning to get  it accurate.

Lots of fun so many possibilities.

The following day and a trip to Jaycar for some contact mics and I had multiple mics spread around the house, it was quite exciting, could see the peaks of vibration and even see the delay of footsteps hitting one mic and then a further away one.

Tests one and tow down yes it possible now what to do with it all.

Filling a room with light was a key part of this idea, so to see how it would work I borrowed a projector and collected an array of shiny thing and waited for night.

(I also created a few mock ups of circular projections, including running some imagery through a polar displacement filter so the unwrapping would work when reflected off the sphere.

The results were ok (just) the room was filled with the light of the projector (with a half spherical chrome lamp shade) I did manage to get my horizon around the walls, but the quality of the light was low. I had some quite nice bumpy artefacts from the imperfections of the chrome, but i did like this texture. The main problem was the lack brightness. I guess light is a bit like paint the projector gives enough for a couple of square metres, but I was spreading out over about 100.
The image was also lost a bit due to my not white walls, the ceiling was ok, and too many windows and furniture made it harder to pick out all the details.

A bit of disappointment but not all was lost,

If I have white walls it would be better.
My room was quite large, with high sloping ceiling, so this should be better.
I don’t need sharp imagers, vague bloby colours would be ok.
I will need to make sure the contrast is pretty high.

It still could work, just might have to lower my expectations a little.

A stainless steel saucepan lid reflects to a much smaller space and filled a good chunk of the ceiling, the kids and I had a great time turning the roof in to a giant interactive lava lamp.

The plan so far.

project onto a sphere, use contact mics to measure movements and vibrations in the room, what will be great for this is if the room is quite noisy this will set up the natural heartbeat or breathing of the piece, even with no one in the room, it will have some sort of life as it listens to the world that contains it.

I have often looked at Arduino kits and the possibilities of what can be achieved with them. It will be great to incorporate them in my project, an essential skill to have if I want to step beyond the computer. A little reading suggests I should easily be able to hook up multiple contact mics and do something useful with the data.

After much thought and consultation I decided to start down the path of physical computing.

I have always been interested in how people relate to technology, for work as an interactive nedia developer it’s essential to have some insight into human computer interaction. Bit what interests me even more is how people relate to computers in the first place. Computers meen so many sufferer things to different people. For me the computer has replaced the Lego box of my youth. It’s a box of possibilities, a potal into a world limited only by my imagination and resourcefullness.

My kids  see the computer as a playground  full of games where they are pretty likely to find a fried or too hanging out. It is also very empowering in he computer does their bidding it’s a sophisticated “seemingly smart” tool that they have mastery over.

My wife approaches the computer with a sense of mistrust as a computer systems administrator computers are objects that need constant tending, they create problems and need to be sorted out.

My mother sees her computer as a holy Grail somewhere in it’s depths it contains the secret of health and eternal youth.

My father in law is the worlds biggest bizzare where someone with a few wits can trade in trinkets well enough to surround themselves in riches with the profits of cunning deals.

These feelings relate to computers in their standard environment, once you find the computer in a different environment these feeling can quickly change.

I despise computer kiosks in museams, this sort of display strikes me as lazy and unimaginative. Why would I travel to a building full of physical wonders to get an experiance I could have anywhere. Another issue I gave with this is these computers are very shallow neutered version of my fabulous box of possibilities.

Sooo how is all this relevant to what I want to do with electronic media?
To place art on a screen, or have any interactive art shackled to a mouse or keyboard means people coming to this piece are already tainted with preconceptions. If I realy want people to be as open as possible I feel I need to break away from these constraints.

I have explored with camera interactivity before what I realy want to do is step outside of that. So my first step as I see it is to gather input from a physical space and translate that to a visual response.

The plan so far.

The idea is to immerse the viewer inside the computers mind (Ok maybe mind is pushing it, how about brain or world)

You step in to a room a fully projected space surrounded by undulating lights and colour and sounds, but these are no random images they are a construction of the computers sensors, the viewer is not alone, movement sounds and location, are all being monitored, and fed back out to fill the visual space, as a viewer walks around the space then the space its self will transform as result. (are the visuals controlling the viewer, the viewer controlling the visuals or some symbiotic relation between the two)

Ok pretty excited about this prospect, sure this isn’t necessarily a unique idea, but it is one I want to explore and one I want to see where it takes me.