Looking outwards
The piece called Arduino Video Game for the Neighborhood is by artist Kris Temmerman. For the piece Kris created an installation in which passersby could play video games on their way past his store. All the information for the game is stored on the Arduino and he uses C++ to generate classes from bitmaps for the character images. As I mentioned before in my last piece about Max, I really like pieces that interact with communities and the public in simple and engaging ways. Overall, conceptually I don’t think this piece is very revolutionary. I think that maybe if Kris was to make the actual video game somehow relate to the neighborhood itself (like making characters in the game actual characters from the neighborhood).
https://www.creativeapplications.net/games/arduino-video-game-for-the-neighbourhood/
Sonic body
Sonic body is an audio installation which seeks to make the human body an orchestra. Developed by four interdisciplinary artists and a heart surgeon the piece uses interactive elements to create an environment in that stimulates the human body. Inside it’s filled with sculptural fabric forms that mimic the internal contours of the body. As the viewer moves and interacts with the structure, a symphony of spatialized sounds are triggered. What I really like about this piece is how structural it is. As someone who really has an affinity to sculpture. I like how organic the shapes how much they seem to resemble parts of the human body. I also wouldn’t have thought that pieces made by circuit boards would be so aesthetically pleasing. I think one of the things I would say about the piece however is that the sounds it emits when a person interacts with them is prerecorded. If there was a way to make the piece real time, by potentially mic-ing up the participants and then emitting the sounds from said mics, I think that would add another interesting layer to the piece.
The piece 27MHz
The piece 27MHz: Common Ground by Jonas Halfmeyer and Daniel Wessolek is an installation of nine kinetic structures which all operate on 27MHZ. People interact with the nine installations through the use of spotlights. By directing a spotlights into designated holes in the peace. Each hole represents a kinetic installation and by covering them with spotlights, it activates an matching installation to spread out through a common 27MHz frequency. I think this piece can be improve maybe aesthetically, because, as it stands it looks kind of incomplete.