when do we use computers in our finished
pieces i mean every piece has a computer
inside
well yeah but it's not like a mac you
know it's like a it's a microcontroller
yeah but the mac part is just the shape
of it really i mean the end of the input
output processing so i guess what i was
trying to say was that
you don't have like a full function it's
like you can't play music on the pixels
right yes you can you could just have
like appears and get it too vibrating
yeah we could but that's not how it's
built
i mean you can't on go play you'd have
to re-engineer the whole thing but
anyways all right we can cut that part
yeah that's how we decide
so the way we started uh working
together is we took a class together at
the mit media lab and
at the time the media lab got this new
gesture interaction system we were
working on in that class a system to do
gestural
editing of live television so it's a
system called g-speak it's super
sophisticated very high resolution low
latency
full hand tracking system where it can
tell the difference between subtle
finger movements it can get pixel
accuracy pointing across a room by doing
that we realized it could work really
well together you could get a lot of
stuff done and we're both fascinated and
interested in figuring out ways to make
technology more interactive also
specifically with the physical nature of
information rather than
you know so often you can use technology
just as
lights or um or things dancing around on
screens
but when you make it into physical
objects and you try and
emerge digital and physical worlds it's
challenging but also far more human
humanizing and that's something that we
both i think latched on to early and and
found a lot of common resonance with
with the project 640x480 the interactive
lighting installation we are looking
specifically at problems and experiences
and just life around all these screens
right when we're communicating with this
entire vast digital world that we've
created
all through glass and all through
picture elements that we can't touch
little lights that turn on and off and
they represent everything to us that's
how this digital realm is presented yet
we can't touch them you know we can't
form them with our hands we have to use
these implements to poke at them
which works incredibly well
but also lacks so much of what we
you know what our brains are kind of
formed around 3d navigation or physical
you know tactile sensation and all these
things
so as a kind of critique of this system
and a way to understand and access some
of those ideas we made this physical
installation so you can see it and think
about it in a different way
like we spent a lot of time
when you're developing the pixels
figuring out how does the future grab
one of them how does the future like
pull that away from the wall
magnet and also not just the physical
experience too but also the physical
kind of experience of the software
behavior too because when you touch the
pixels the light changes directly with
your touch so as soon as you touch it
the light backs away a little bit as if
it was mirroring a spring or a physical
system it's like every everything that
we do every form that we make
has a purpose very very rarely would do
anything that's just decorative you know
if ever it's it's not that there's
anything wrong with that but i think the
thing that's really compelling to us is
to try and convey the concept to
physically manifest this concept
experience as powerfully and as clearly
as we can then the aesthetics arise from
that
so
this is an open framework simulation of
the pulse installation that we've been
working on where we have about a hundred
of these towers
in a room
and they're all
oscillating
and
changing their color they're going from
dark to light
and they're trying to entrain with each
other
entrainment in the oxford english
dictionary definition verbatim uh is the
property of oscillating systems to tend
towards each other
which is actually not the oxford
definition but i think it makes sense
so you have oscillating i believe yeah
oxford yeah sure
sounds good um oscillating systems like
you know a light that goes on and off on
and off or a metronome these systems
when in the same physical space if
they're linked in any way they'll tend
towards the same cycle
the reason why i think internment's
interesting is because
it's really hard to understand
how our actions affect other people's
and it's really hard to understand how
we're affected by others as well
if you look at your heartbeat for
instance right um
you can't quite tell how your heart's
doing you don't know how fast it's
beating you don't know if you're nervous
or if you're calm the moment they start
wearing a heart rate monitor you can see
it and you can see it changing
and the same way that i don't know about
mine i don't know about yours and i
don't know how you potentially affect
mine i think that's what really
fascinates me it's like using technology
in this case to show people
something about themselves and then
showing people how they connect to the
world around them and how the same
phenomenon is happening elsewhere as
well
so this is a maquette that we built you
see that this little guy is touching
this tower and the wave is spreading out
through the space
so this is just one simple way we can
think about the interaction between the
towers but other things that people will
be able to do is have
touch two towers and then what does that
do and you connect two of them or um if
i touch this person and then touch a
tower
what does that mean and what are the
different variations of behavior that we
can implement so we're kind of doing a
study to figure out how we want to build
that
i think we're a really interesting phase
now where
i mean for for hundreds of years people
have made art and have designed objects
um and normally those objects like
represent and reflect a society that we
live in so i think in every project that
we do we try to really look at what's
going on outside in the world that we
think is
strange or interesting or
that people are not quite maybe seeing
the way that we do and then we try to
represent that somehow this the kind of
stuff that we do could not happen
without
things like open frameworks or arduino
or the maple where
lots of people that are way smarter than
we are
spend a lot of time making super cool
tools that let us do things a lot faster
so that we can actually focus on the
concepts and ideas we're interested in
instead of focusing on getting the
technology there and a lot of times you
find that the technology is not quite
there yet and in that case you either
invent it or maybe wait a little bit
or put an idea to the side i think i
think time traveling is one that we've
been kind of waiting a little bit for
yeah it's not cheap enough yet yeah
you