What My Art Work is About?
Tue, 03/01/2011 – 17:56 — manderson
My work bonds tangible data with abstract thoughtthrough a combination of a digital system and human interaction. I do this by developing computer code that modifies its output based on human interrelation. I am intrigued by the idea that the introduction of a human into a linear system will generate an undetermined result. The result can be from one person’s single interaction or from the combined efforts of a number of different people in many different locations. Relinquishing the control of the system by unearthing the possibilities from human relationship brings forward a unique experience each time the project is experienced.
In the project Visible Gestures, my collaborators and I recreated the city of Chicago into a three‐dimensional computer model. By deconstructing, or hacking, Nintendo’s Wii technology, we were able to allow participants to travel throughout the virtual Chicago based on their body’s position within the installation. As they navigated through the digital landscape, their virtual‐self (or avatar) displayed a message about Chicago’s architecture, these messages were emailed directly to the project from any person wishing to interact with it from anywhere in the world. As the participant traveled arbitrarily throughout the digitally rendered city, a message authored by another person somewhere else on the globe was displayed.
This curiosity between connectivity between human and machine led my team and I to develop Infinite Sprawl, a project that enabled people to send text messages to a computer that transformed their words into shapes base off the words prevalence to modernist text. The shapes could then be altered by any person visiting the gallery and formed into digital architectural structures. The project was displayed in Art in American and in the Wallstreet Journal.