Media Art @ Amsterdam Light Festival | 2013-2014

The Dark Side of Amsterdam is an interactive installation that was presented at the Amsterdam Light Festival 2013-2014. The citizens of Amsterdam were asked to reflect on their sins. Visitors would choose custom made glow-in-the-dark glasses that corresponded with their worst sin, and were asked to enter ‘the confession booth’ where a semi-anonymous long exposure portrait was taken. The portraits were projected onto the Moses & Aaron Church in real time, accompanied by visuals that depict a sin. During the 3 day installation there were more than 400 visitors who confessed their sins.

Project Presentation at BEAMLAB 2014 event where the project won the Audience Award.

In collaboration with mediaLABamsterdam, Frouke ten Velden, Excelsior Visuals

>Access the twitter stream of the project here<

Media Art @ CIID | 2014

The concept of this installation was to repurpose trashed paper and reflect on the design process in a studio environment. Through the course of one week, paper trash from the CIID studio was collected along with the sound bytes and dialogues of people as they worked on their projects. The clips of their conversations and paper noises were mixed into a chaotic track of audio which is ‘released’ when the paper trash is swept across the floor. Hence, ‘simulating chaotic conversations through the gesture of sweeping trash’ became the key concept for the performance.

Sweeping is a very intuitive gesture to collect trash paper. To release the sound of this gesture, seven contact microphones were attached to various pieces of paper trash. These pieces of trash were then buried amongst a larger pile of trash. The vibrations from the broom and paper are captured by the contact mics and this sound is then used to modulate the audio through a vocoder effect. As the paper pile becomes more dense and the contact mics come closer together, the sound is amplified. The installation was showcased as a live theatrical performance. Through this project the relationship between sound and materials was explored to create meaningful installations.

SETUP

CONTACT MICROPHONES

INSTALLATION

In collaboration with Yashodeep Gholap, Francesca Desmarais

Mentored by : Sha Xin Wei (Arizona State University, School of Arts,Media&Engineering) & Chris Wood (Queen's Mary University of London)

Media Art @ CIID | 2014

Client : Microsoft

As a part of the Microsoft Design Challenge 2014, the concept of Screaming Plastic was proposed to address the brief of “Making Sense of A Billion Sensors”.Drawing on current developments in printed electronics and alternative energies this project proposes a singular large scale event to address the growing problem of plastic pollution.Plastic bottle wrappers are augmented with sensors to generate noise disturbances upon contact with bodies of water. This project explored the possibilities of a billion sensors and the impact of such a large scale implementation on society.Screaming plastic aims to raise awareness of plastic pollution and motivate action against it. Leveraging the existing proximity relationship between plastic trash and our environment we intend to create a language that allows the environment to communicate and vocalise its grievances to its inhabitants. In trash becoming audible we seek to create a public nuisance; beg intervention and add greater visibility to the problem of plastic pollution.

PROCESS

PROTOTYPE

In collaboration with Arunima Singh, Kaitlyn Schwalje