CrossingsFirst workshop: Roehampton University 21/02.05 - new visualisation Second workshop: The Place |
Crossings questions the idea of movement in space occupied by three different kinds of users: the passerby, the trained performer and the digital agent. Learning from non-linear dynamic systems, Crossings investigates a performed event-space created through the intersections - and dynamic exchanges – between three trained intelligences.
Performativity, intelligent environments, complex systems, bifurcation, inflection, flow, field, territory, emergent behaviour
Crossings is the development of a set of performed intersections exploring the dense space of a public crossing. Here, two new intelligences are spliced into the social space at times mimicking and at times departing from the behaviours of the passerby.
Crossings takes place within a social space of the navigation of a given public space (e.g. the crossing of a street). Two new intelligences are introduced into this space: the performer and an intelligent environment. Taking point of departure in the given behaviour of the space, the two intelligences seek to evolve their own strategies for transgressing/inhabiting the space of navigation.
Crossings questions the evolution of behaviours, taking into account their inherent social identity and sitedness. Learning from the early work of Carl Simms, the work seeks to develop means of thinking rule based behaviour and the emergence of pattern, identity and intelligence.
The project will be started through an initial workshop setting up a simple rule based system with a top mounted camera interface and top down projection. The workshop is seen as a venue for developing the research question. By bringing together the research partners (architecture, choreography and programming) the workshop aims to question the basis of the project and develop the further research goals.
In the first stage the environment is envisaged as a simple swarm informed by rules determining the behaviour of spline based shapes. In the workshop the environment will be explored in 2D allowing us to imagine the splines as lines in 2D.
The swarm has a set departure and goal (either side of the crossing) and negotiates the presence of the passerbys by seeking to avoid colliding with them. Learning from non-linear dynamic systems, the swarm will be visualised as a set of nurb based surfaces drawn in time (tracing their past movement). As in the visualisation of turbulence the aim of the visualisation is to explore how the simple rules informing the movement of the surfaces will inform the parameters of speed (fast, stopping, slow) and curvature (degree and self curvature).
The digital environment of Crossings is initially conceived as swarm system where the emergent behaviour of the whole is a result of simple rules defining the behaviour of an ecology of inhabitants.
In the second stage of the project it is intended that the environment will
be intelligent and evolving. Based on a genetic algorithm, the environment
will be determined by a fitness function judging the success of each crossing
surface. Surfaces deemed to be successful (by means of the parameters of speed
and linearity) will spawn new surface while unsuccessful surfaces will be
terminated.
The role of the performers: performer as virus
A first imagination of the role of the performers is as a knowing participant
bridging the behaviours of the passerby (and therefore the social space) and
the intelligent environment. The performers will be conceived as an interruption
to the system, a virus that intersects with the environments learning of new
behaviours. As the environment learns to engage with the (and therefore successfully
traverse the space of the crossing), the performers become a means of interrupting
this learning curve, unsettling the environment and creating new criteria
for the intelligent environment.
The prototype will employ a camera interface tracking user motion in a set space following the linear structure of a crossing. The camera is top mounted tracking the movement of users in plan. Here, the parameters of interaction will be direction and speed (velocity).
In the second stage a more robust system will be developed. Learning from Bill Seaman’s dance collaboration Inversions the possibility of a infrared laser beam system will be explored (question is how to draw behaviour from field of space).
In the initial workshop the environment will be projected as a top down projection in 2D. For the second stage a series of screens are imagined. These screens will be position in the space of the performance but excluded from the ‘view’ of the intelligent environment.
Further ideas could be the use of handheld PDA displays distributed amongst the audience or notions of an embedded display. A third solution to be explored is the idea of a top down projection on the hanging piences (learning from Susan Hiller’s microphone piece / top down projection)
Crossings will involve the development of an interactive sound dimension. Here questions of amplifcation and re-sonitication will become key terms.
Further questions
