Projectconcept - Windfang
“Windfang” is an interactive art-installation in which telepresence is achieved through the interaction with cloth. At two locations a large piece of cloth is hanging from the ceiling. The viewer standing in front of the first piece of fabric can interact with it by pushing and pulling it, the movement of the fabric is then captured by an optical sensor and reproduced on the second cloth using multiple fans and vice versa. Therefore the presence of the viewer is transmitted to the other viewer through the movement of air. In real-life presence the hypertrophy of the optical sense inhibits the perception of the haptic presence that might be felt through sudden changes in air pressure or the slight breeze caused by the movement of a body. This installation focusses on this presence, using cloth and air as the medium of transmitting this presence to spaces beyond its reach and establishing telepresence with the purpose of communicating closeness rather than mere information.
Related works
David Bowen - tele-present water [1]
Christoph Kilian - Tuchfühler / touching silk [2]
Aaron Sherwood - Firewall [3]
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer - Remote Pulse [4]
Tasks
Task 1
It is hard for me to pick one favourite artwork as they all pursue very different strategies. Julian Oliver’s Men in Grey captures the Zeitgeist of the uncontrollable rise of WiFi within our lives, while exposing us to our technological life, defined by groups and organizations that are beyond our own reach, without fear mongering or shaming us for our digital life. While the Men in Grey exposed one concerning facet of our daily life, the Yes Men achieve to confront us with the grim reality of a capitalistic economy in various ways and their ability and relentlessness to repeat variations of their media activistic stunts just makes abundantly clear, that change takes time and the will and courage of a few individuals that are in power.
Besides the politically motivated works, I find great pleasure in simplistic works like David Bowen’s Tele-present water, while simple in concept, it focuses on the relation between our perceived world and the world of a buoy station at an unknown location, highlighting that even when not perceived by us the ocean is, was and always will be moving relentlessly, whether we are there to perceive it or not.
Even though its technical implementation is marvelous, what intrigues me the most about Random international’s Rain Room is its ability to convey the viewer an alternate reality, where it is not the rain that is repelled by us, but we repel the rain and how this simple change might change our behaviour and perception of the space around us.