Sergio Ferreira

ZMU.
Usually when we turn on the lights, we do it with the flick of a switch.
ZMU makes us question this by replacing the simple action into one that requires a little more patience.

The black bowl is filled with sand, to turn on the lights we take some sand and gently scatter it out onto the white tablet, the more sand we scatter the brighter the lights are. To turn off the lights, we pick up the bowl in one hand and with the other hand we sweep the sand back into the bowl.

Highly impractical you might say, and i fully agree, the aim here is not to develop an efficient light switch but rather to design an installation that can help us reflect on a particular action.

A sonic and visual participative inter-species installation. The installation consists of an ecosphere placed in the middle of the room, in the ecosphere some living organisms float about. All their moves are captured and analyzed in realtime by a computer vision system. This data is used to activate certain parts of an algorithm that control the sound and lighting in the room. The algorithm is ever evolving by itself, but it leaves its decisive actions to the living organisms in the ecosphere.

The audience also has an effect on the final result, their presence and location controlling some parameters of the sounds and lights. As an example we can imagine that the algorithm in conjunction with the living organisms in the ecosphere have activated blue lights and the sound of whales. The position of the audience members in the room, would then control the speed at which the blue lights flicker and the pitch frequency of the whale sound.

The algorithm keeps track of the time spent by the audience members in the room, learning which color and sound was most enjoyed by the audience. Each day during the last hour of the installation, the algorithm will only activate the color and sound that was most enjoyed by the audience that day. Thus taking away the decisive power of the living organisms, and instead granting them the same role as the audience members, the control of a light or sound parameter.

This project aims to symbolize the possible interaction between humans, nature and machines in the creation of an ever evolving environment, an habitat.

LKLine__
A luminous Kinetic sculpture that functions as a participative sound installation. Visitors can interact with the sculpture through a tactile interface. The luminous line is suspended from the ceiling, each breakpoint of this line is attached to a motor. The interface consists of 6 pads, each pad controls the position of one of the motors.

The pads are made of a stretchable conductive fabric, resulting in a unique tactile experience. By sliding a finger over the fabric, one applies pressure on the pad´s surface thus changing the fabric´s conductivity. By analyzing the changes in conductivity we can read the finger´s movement, and translate this data into a controller that moves the motor up or down.

The division of the interface into 6 individual pads allows more people to interact with the sculpture and still experience a direct feedback of their influence on the sculpture.The positions of the motors not only move the sculpture, they also shape a sound. Over time the installation cycles through several sound modules, in each module these 6 parameters will affect different elements of the sound.

SMYM.
A light column capable of changing color is placed at the LCD´s physical space.
By visiting the LCD website, visitors can choose a color from a menu, this choice is sent to the light column, which will change its color accordingly.