Joseph Butch Rovan | rovan@brown.edu

COLLIDE explores the idea of interaction as a function of sometimes random, sometimes controlled moments of impact. Collision always has its consequences, the piece suggests, but those consequences are entirely variable, producing results that are alternately violent, dreamlike, prosaic.

Both the audio and video are controlled by a custom glove controller I built while in residence at IRCAM, as part of the "Real-Time Systems" team. The glove uses force-sensitive-resistors (FSRs), bend sensors, and accelerometers to sense finger, hand, and arm gesture. An infrared controller is also used by the left hand to control macro-behavior of the glove-controller mappings; together the two gloves create a multi-modal controller where large-scale structure is controlled by the left hand, and fine detail is controlled by the right. For the new version of COLLIDE I have completely rebuilt the glove controller, using a new wireless configuration that I recently developed.

All audio is generated by MaxMSP, and video is controlled by Jitter. The real-time video for the piece was created to suggest quasi-archival footage in a gesture of homage to classic early surrealist films by Léger, Bunuel and others. The stylistic mélange has the potential to produce, on another level, a kind of collision of genres.