The Tubing Project: the process of making four waterreservoirs
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Category Archives: Interaction Studies
The Peakock
Once there was a red chair.
In his lifetime nobody has ever sit on him as if the user was feeling comfortable. As if the person who sits on that chair was in a passive mood and was sitting confieniënt.The chair wants to be more attractive.
The chair wants to lure more people and be a host, a butler, a mother, a friend in one.
The chair wants to be a chair for everyone. Not just for one man or woman, but for more people who would interact with eachother and the chair.
The chair wants to be a magnet for people where the people gather together and talk all day long. The chair wants a cosy environment around him and where even unknown people will talk to eachother if it was the most common way.
And there he was: The Peakock.
With his thousands of white shiny hardplastic bendy flaps he shines in the bride lights of any environment. With his flow of motion in every single flap he gets everyone’s attention. His presence is tangible. Furthermore you come closer to the chair he wil lure you more by increasing the amplitude of the “waving” white flaps. He lures. He seduces. His new “skin” with greater details like his countless rectangular shaped flaps moves dynamic as if the wind strokes his flappy surface. The waving gives you a tranquil feeling. You will be curious why its behaving. If you understand that this chair can interact.
You want to see more. You want to do more. You interact.
The Peakock
Liquid Space
Liquid space by Studio Roosegaarde
Liquid Space is an ‘interactive space’ that becomes physically bigger, smaller, and brighter in relation to human behavior. As an organic fusion of mechanisms and embedded electronics the artwork creates a playful dialogue with its visitors. It’s latest version (6.1) was placed on the island of Terschelling (NL) for Atelier Oerol.
Funktionide ( by Stefan Ulrich)
German designer Stefan Ulrich designed a conceptual shape-changing amorphous object as a part of his graduate thesis. This concept, as an emotional robot, is based on EAP – technology (electro-active polymers/ artificial muscle technology) and substitutes human contact.
Performative Ecologies
Performative Ecologies is a project by Ruairi Glynn, an installation artist, curator, and writer from the UK. Glynn teaches at the Bartlett, UCL & Central Saint Martins, and UAL between the disciplines of architecture and interaction design. Performative Ecologies is an installation that can be described as an investigation of gestural forms of dialogue between inhabitants and an evolving environment.
The setup consists of three or four robotic “dancers” in a darkened space that perform for the inhabitants with rotating illuminating tails. This community of autonomous robotic creatures proposes and negotiates with the audience to perform the perfect dance by measuring and analyzing attention levels. For the “dancers” to see and understand their audience they are equipped with low light vision cameras that detect and read the facial expression of the audience. Before and after a dance routine results are assessed and a genetic algorithm is put to work to evolve their dances. As the robots learn from their successes and failures, their knowledge is shared with the larger ecology by dancing for each other.
Interactive Wall
Interactive Wall is an installation that interacts with it’s surroundings through movement, light and sound. The behaviour of these modalities and the software behind it, were designed by Hyperbody‘s very own Kas Oosterhuis and Chris Kievid. They were approached by the company Festo to showcase their newly developed Fin Ray Effect technique at Hanover Messe 2009.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVz2LIxrdKc
When one would approach one of the 7 fins - so called nodes – the installation consists of, it would retract into a hollow form. Additionally it would emit sound through an internal speaker and light through a pattern of LED’s underneath it’s ‘skin’.
What is not so apparent at first, is that all the nodes would interact with eachother in a swarm-like manner. This behaviour mimics a natural phenomenon called spontaneous synchronous order, and can be summarized by the following rules:
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Individual elements are only aware of their nearest neighbours.
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The elements have a tendency to line-up in relation to each other.
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While the elements follow each other, they are attracted at a distance.
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Response to stimulus. The agents in a sync. system respond as individuals, rather than a single entity, when their swarm structure is disrupted (for example when attacked by a predator).
The nodes were programmed in such a way that they would respond to our presence by moving away from us, as if we were predators. Thus, obeying to rule 4. This in turn would agitate the node, because it would require him to disobey rule 2 and 3. It would express this anger by increasingly higher it’s pitch and blink it’s LED’s.
If we would move away from the node, it would again calibrate itself to its neighbours, resulting in a wavelike behaviour of the ‘swarm’ as a whole, ultimately bringing the installation to a standstill, until it is triggered again.
After analyzing Interactive Wall, we felt like the installation was an overall success. The only thing we think that could have been improved, was the modularity of it all. Because the nodes were connected at the base through an aluminum pedestal, and shared a central computer ‘brain’, it wasn’t entirely modular, and this undermined the rationale of a swarm to a certain extend.
FEAR Furniture
FEAR Furniture is a project invented and designed by Marie Sester. It was featured in the main lobby of The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) as part of Uncertain Spectator from November 18, 2010 until January 29, 2011.
The installation consists of a set of rather inviting looking chairs and a table, calmly breathing. Its looks are deceiving though, as once you go near the chairs they start hissing and growling in an attempt to scare you away. Marie Sester’s goal was to force people to show their fear rather than to keep in inside. She also wanted to make the installation very accessible to people by making the installation react to people’s presence only. Continue reading
Glowing Pathfinder Bugs
“Recently discovered by Squidsoup researchers in Faroffistan, the Glowing Pathnder Bug appears to be a hybrid centipede/caterpillar. It lives in the sandy deserts of Faroffistan, and has the habit of roaming along small trenches, gulleys, and paths.“
this is how the Glowing Pathfinder Bug installation, by squidsoup, is introduced.
Piano Stairs
The Piano Stairs was originally invented by Remo Saraceni and many versions have been made since. The “breakthrough” performance for the Piano Stairs, so to speak, was in the movie “Big” featuring Tom Hanks, where he and a co-star performed on a set of piano keys on the floor.
Hylozoic Ground
Hylozoic Ground is an artificial glass-like forest which interacts with people and with itself. It is designed by Philip Beesley.
Hylozoism: “Philosophical conjecture that all material things possess life.
The goal of the hylozoic ground is closing the gap between Natural/human experience and artificial world.
The designer is Philip Beesley. He is an architect/sculptor with focus on future architecture. The team consists of a core fabrication team of 6 people, 12 full-time people from mechatronic engineers to graphic designers, and 30-40 volunteers. It is an ongoing project of 5 years. The costs can vary from 0-1 Million $.
Flexible grid
The construction consists of 2 different columns that hang onto the flexible grid shell. There are 2 kinds of columns, the swallowing column and the breathing column with breathing and kissing pore components. The building blocks of this forest are all laser cut polycarbonate pieces. There is very little waste of material because the building blocks are very smart dimensioned. From 8 cubic feet of material a forest of 8000cubic feet is constructed.
The movement of the forest is being powered by muscle wire. This wire is activated by a small amount of electrical power, and through leverages it is able to move. The motherboard is connected through a serial communication bus to the daughter boards. The daughter boards are connected to different columns. This way the forest can interact with itself through the serial communication bus, and interact with the people.