@HBC 28.11.2009

by Daniel Franke & Christopher Warnow

daniel-franke.com & brian-steen.com/blog/

Music by Machinefabriek (Rutger Zuydervelt)
machinefabriek.nu/

The piece is inspired by VR-sculptures, though technically and
conceptionally transcending the helmet-like “90ies data-glasses”.
The basic thought is to re-organise the relationship between
“the viewer and the viewed” whose traditional functions are
expanded technologically; the starting point however remains
set in “real space”.

A portable screen is used to visualise the soundsculpture; a
camera attached to the screen collects information of the space
surrounding it from markers distributed on adjacent surfaces.
The screen becomes a transmitter superimposing a digital layer
-the sculpture onto “real space” (the unmanipulated space that
greets the naked eye). The process allows the viewer to abandon
the passive position of the “merely on-looking” consumer; he is
enabled to visually and acoustically intervene with the sculpture,
to model and module it. His changing positions and movements
affect the visualisations on the screen, rendering an “extended
reality” accessible. The sculpture generated is individually linked
to each observer and thus singular.

The traditionally static and inactive viewer position is replaced by
a mobile, navigating and active observer position. The one-way
reactive relationship between sender and receiver is abandoned
through a feedback channel to the moving image. The sound
sculpture interprets a composition by Rutger Zuydervelt, that,
parallel to the visual sculpture spreads spatially around the
viewer through four loudspeakers. Employing FFT data the
generated sculpture changes depending on the position of the
user which is calculated by spatially distributed AR-markers. As
it is Algorithm-based the sculpture is non-haptic – it is a
generated but manipulable projection. Nonetheless the starting
point remains set in “real space”: the technology does not
attempt to conquer reality through VR, but rather seeks
intersection points with the real-space context of the observer.
The Laszló Moholy Nagy quote “Colour becomes light, mechanic
turns into sculpture” resonates in this work, only here one might
rephrase “Colour becomes thought, mechanic turns into narration”.