Physical Computing Art Presentation

On Saturday I visited many Chelsea art galleries and kept track of any interactive projects or projects that used physical computing. This month there are many. (see art log)

I wanted to present two of my interactive installations. Both were programmed by other people and one of the reasons i am here at ITP is because I want to know how to do these things for myself.

My first interactive installation was called Disembodied Voices and it was a 5 projection installation. Four of the projections were looping DVDs. Just the fifth (center screen) was interactive. 10 toy cell phones were suspended from the ceiling, these were the triggers for the interactivity. When the buttons on the phones were pushed the key press in Flash was activated through the hacked key board we used, causing sound to fill the space and the icon on the screen to grow.

This is a picture of the component we used that was attached to the computer and the phones.

The project's documentation can be seen here:
http://www.jodyzellen.com/dvx_index.html

The other installation I created was when I had a residency at Pace University. I worked with the computer science department to create an interactive installation where viewers triggered sounds and projections as they moved up and down the stairs. Processing was used to interface between the sensors and the flash animations I created. Documentation of this instalaltion can be seen here:
http://www.jodyzellen.com/pace2.html