Observer Effect

This work is in part derived from a short story by Ray Bradbury. Originally published as 'The World the Children Made’ in the September 23, 1950 edition of the The Saturday Evening Post and later presented as ‘The Veldt’ in the anthology The Illustrated Man in 1951.

Observer Effect is an aesthetically restrained virtual response to audience presence within the gallery. On entering the room a subtle projection suggests the image of a distant, self-absorbed population. As the viewer remains within the space, approaches the wall or is joined by other viewers, the virtual protagonists begin to take note of the audience’s presence and appear to be distracted by their gaze. The distant virtual community grow in response to the audience numbers and appear to engage more actively with the activity in the physical space. As the viewer steps back from the wall or exits the room, the virtual community gradually return to their previous positions in the distance, once more appearing unaffected by their proximity to the gallery space.

The work is created through the development of a generative system. The low-powered, high-resolution projection deliver content from a computer-based system responsively creating the imagery of a virtual community from algorithmically created avatars and a library of motion captured animated movement. The dynamic selection, editing and composition of the content is dictated by the feedback information received from thermal
video-feed analysis of audience position and numbers.

Materials:

MacPro, 2 Kinect Devices, 2 HD Projectors, SEOS Warp Generator, Custom software.

With thanks to:
Hydar Dewachi
Jan Wedekind
Robert Jeffries

Stephen Foster, Ros Carter, Julian Grater, Zoha Zokaei and colleagues at John Hansard Gallery

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