Artwork Review: Inter-Mission

The lapse project is a collection of five projects, all revolving around the theme of lapses in time, in memory and in realities. Whilst not being able to physically be in the preence of these art works, reading up on it I was able gather an impression of it.

The projects:

  • VR Lapse
  • Particle Lapse
  • 24 hour Lapse
  • Panorama Lapse
  • Journal Lapse

Within the projects the last two, Panorama Lapse and Journal Lapse are not interactive, hence I will not be discussing them.

VR Lapse is a virtual reality simulation, bringing the audience to Singapore’s oldest colonial building, only to find out it is digitally erased.

Does Out of Sight, Out of Mind in Singapore leads to Nevermind?

Quoted from popspoken.com, during their interview with inter-mission shares the artists concern with how significant Art related artefacts in Singapore are slowly being washed away with the ever changing landscape.

With that message in mind, I wonder if the project works on someone with no context of the place at all. It is true that these are cultural landmarks, however I am left drawing a blank when someone tells me ‘Art House’.  They were trying to trigger this idea of misplacement, the ‘I am pretty sure there is something missing here’ sort of thought, but if there was no recollection of the place in the first place, can this idea still be drawn out? Does that hinder the experience of the work.

Subsequently since we are discussing the idea of interactivity of a work, I feel that the interactivity level is quite  low. Being placed on empty, unchanging landscape, with nothing to influence, is passive like watching a movie or a slide show.

The second project adds to the atmosphere of the first. Particle Lapse is more interactive in a sense that it is using the movement of the viewer and creating a feedback sound/atmosphere for the audience who is traversing the virtual world, giving them the extra dimension of sound that is meant to confuse the audience. In this case there is a contributive element that the audience plays in the artwork.

Finally there is 24 Hour Lapse which is an installation where visitors from the past 24 hours are projected alongside the present visitors on a CRT monitor. It is kind of interesting how they play with the idea of people from two differnt times sharing the same space, even if it is only a screen. However in terms of interactivity, it is again quite passive as the present visitors cannot influence the already pre-recorded video.

Overall the Lapse project is not a very interactive project. It works more as a stage which is the artists mind, and the audience is the audience, not the participants on the stage.  As such we only view their feelings and experience for the idea of lapse in memory, which is not always universal hence abit hard to relate to.

Device of the Week: Fitness Tracker

A fitness tracker is a device that you wear on your wrists. It keeps track of multiple things like the number of steps you have taken, your heart rate, your location, etc (depending on the model).

xiaomi mi band 3 review

In this case we will be looking at the MI Band 3, which has the ability to track:

  • exercise in terms of steps taken, distance moved, calories burned
  • sleep, whether deep or light and total sleep
  • heart rate, automatic or manual

The device itself has a long lasting battery, and has a quick charge function, which is very convinent as it is a device that is to be used on a day to day basis. Subsequently it is also affordable, unlike other brands which can cost up to a few hundred in the market.

Mi Band 3

It also functions as a Smart watch.

However, some reviews say that the product cannot compare to other brands, like Fitbit, in terms of competetive analsis and sharing. Also being a China brand it also not compatible with the iPhone (sorry iPhone users no xiaomi for you). Subsequently, the band has most of its functions like a seperate ‘my exercise’ function in built in the app, but not it the phone. Which makes it a bit more tedious in the sense that you have to bring your phone with you when you exercise (ah, first world problems).

Considering this, if the xiaomi wants to be more competetive in the market, the company should first make their products competible with all products (uh, easier said then done huh). Having more apps already in built in the band would also make things more convinient for the lazy consumer, or maybe have a slightly more specialised tracking system that would allow them to differentiate when the wearer is doing one activity or another.

Video References:

Interactive Art Research: Rain Room

‘Rain Room’ by Random International featured in the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2013. It makes use of a 100 square meter room full of falling water simulating rain, and 3D tracking cameras to capture the motion of the visitors passing through the room. By doing so would stop the ‘rain’ fall above that peticular area and create a pathway for them to cross.

The work replicates the sound and the smell of the rain, creating a sort of white noise that encompasses you along with the rain. It sort of reflects this relationship between human and nature, which is subsequently getting regulated with technology. How contrary it is that people would stand and simply contemplate in this artifical downpour vs fleeing the actual downpour.

What I find particularly interesting about this project is the artist statement of creating this room. They said that they had created the room with no preconceived idea of what kind of reaction they would draw from the audience experiencing their work. In a sense that unredictability of reaction itself becomes part of the artwork.

“DON’T RUN!” exclaimed a Museum of Modern Art press rep, as a young woman who had entered the field of falling water in Rain Room, 2012, began to take flight and was promptly soaked.

As quoted from artforum.com’s review of the work, after a guest had out ran the motion sensors, temporarily glitching the system and got drenched from the work not stopping the rain for her. It is amazing how this ‘carefully chereographed downpour’ still had the ability to instill that same instincts humans have in the faces of an actual downpour in some, however bring out a contemplative peace in others.

Video:

Red Box, Blue Box: a Mini Project

Red Box, Blue Box is just the start of a bunch of interactive acrylic boxes that light at the touch of each other.

The idea of Red Box Blue Box was meant to be of boxes of different shapes and sizes with the ability to connect and influence each other at any side. However due to the time restriction of this project Red Box and Blue Box are the only two to make an appearance.

The humble origins of the boxes

The two boxes begin their humble beginnings as a pair of LED strips attempting to light.

At the beginning I never thought of programming an Arduino per Box due to my lack of knowledge. However eventually, I did manage for two.

The starting stages I have used Aluminium foil switches, as I wanted the circuit to touch and be closed, bringing out the idea of contact instead of a button. However there were some ideas of using a pair of magnets instead of aluminium foil, hence I changed the switch to be made of magnets. Hence I prepped the shell of the box to have two holes for where the magnets will be slotted, not wanting to breech the surface for aesthetic reasons.

I drew out a circuit halfway, only to realize later on that is not how a circuit worked. Subsequently, not only the circuit, I realized I was not using the magnet switches properly. It turns out that magnets despite being able to attract its counter part across two 4mm acrylic pieces, does not actually transmit code through (Sad non-physics student Elizabeth learns the hard way, thank you Dan Ning for the physics lesson).

But alas, the first method of testing Aluminium foil actually prove to be the most efficient method of transmitting code. Hence resulting in the final product.

I Started looking for other circuits to reference, one being connecting two arduinos as such:

Picture of How to Connect Them

But I realised the accompanying code was more reliant on one arduino then the other, which is not what I am looking for.

In the end, I was referencing this circuit.

And creating a simple button circuit

I repeated the circuit for six sides of the hexagon.

Red Box Blue Box in action