Graffonic

André Rangel Macedo, Master in Digital Arts.

3kta,Custom Software and Intermedia Concepts, Porto, Portugal.

e-mail: a@3kta.net

Abstract

Graffonic is a result from the technical process of production of an hyper-tool materialized under the form of an installation. This reactive work of art which I now present will be seen on a video projection, under the control of a video sign analysis system that will cover all of the projection area. The user's movement is quantified in numerical data which will be the intelligible message for the machine. Accordingly, using its relative cognitive ability (supported by algorythmic processes), it will provide an audiovisual answer. The computer's answer is grounded on a process of generative design in order to create an esthetical reflex on a real time scale.

Interactivity/Interface

In reference to interface and interactivity, although we recognize that technology offers room to numerous and variable possibilities, the concept of interactivity to which my work relates is no more than a zone where the physical and the biological directly interact with the abstract and the immaterial. This system allows the machine to give the users control upon the application with reference to the positioning of their hand on the plane. Interaction becomes communication or even "conversation".[1]

I may also add a concept of interactivity related to the artistic field. Interactivity provides a mean to stimulate the power of imagination through the opening of new points of view, not by physical experience but otherwise with the resource to new strategies of interactive media[2], in which visitants are the performers of the artistic work.

It is important to mention the concept of interface in relation to interactivity. In this regard, it is convenient to remember David Rockeby saying according to which if someone reacts intuitively to an audio or visual event, a closed circuit is created in which music and movement slowly unify themselves.[3]

Metaconception/Generative design

My personal experience with metadesigner John de Kam made me more sensitive to the concept of Generative Design. Generative Design lies on generative systems that suggest an alternative approach to the production of images, making possible the autonomous creation or the mathematical generation of hundreds or even thousands of images.

The meta-artist acts simultaneously both as a guide and as an aesthetical decider, concentrating not in the image in itself but rather on the structure that produces the image.

Generative art refers to any artistic practice in which the artist creates a process, such as a set of rules of a natural language, a computer program, a machine or another mechanism, which is then placed functioning with a certain degree of autonomy, fostering or resulting in a complete work of art. In a certain way all humans are also generative systems, and in that way all art is generative. In this context, the word generative art refers to artificial generative art.

General objectives

This installation pretends to be a space open to participation, leaving always the last decisions to the users before the final result of this work.

"Grafonic" is an installation that results from a work presented by me at Juliols summer course at Barcelona, July 2006. The content users/generators will be able to experience and explore the encounter with the machine in a human's scale physical place. In this way, real and virtual confront themselves completing the meaning of my installation.

I intend that it should be used as a piece of urban furniture with entertaining purposes. Thus, the project might function as a kind of laboratory to the study of human behavior in the shape of a space free to the interaction with digital space.

This is a performance in which users define the content and the variability of the control, as I have mentioned before.

References

[1]- Bongers refers that the classic interaction loop man/machine may begin when the user wants to activate the system (in this t, electronic). The system is controlled by the user through inputs, the system processes the information and then presents a result. The human perceives the information presented by the system and then processes it again exercising control.

B. Bongers - Trends in Gestural Control of Music - Gestural Acquisition, Analisis and Control IRCAM - [CD-rom], 2000

- Erkki.... refers that David Rockeby's interactive works show a "creative conversation" between two partners more or less equals. One biological, the other cybernetic.

Huhtamo, Erkki: Silicon remembers Ideology, or David Rokeby's meta-interactive art [Online], 1999: http://homepage.mac.com/davidrokeby/erkki.html

- "...the theme is "communication". What they mean by communication is probably the relationship between art and technology, e between the audience and artistic work."

Murata, Makoto: ArtWatch-Jun.10,1997 [Online], 1997:

http://www.dnp.co.jp/museum/nmp/nmp_b/watch/Jun10_e.html

[2] - Jeffrey Shaw shows the complex negotiation game between body and space.

Shaw, Jeffrey: The Dis-Embodied Re-Embodied Body, [Online], 1996:

http://www.jeffrey-shaw.net/html_main/frameset-writings.php3

[3] - Rokeby, David:Very Nervous System, [Online], 2000:

http://www.interlog.com/~drokeby/vns.html