the responsive field of lattice archipelogics
Exploring dynamic responsive environments
Lattice archipelogics is an installation designed by Servo where a partnership was formed with the smart studio to design the interactive apects of the installation - what we call the responsive field. Servo designed a hundred plastic modules with cavities and conduit capable of holding wiring, sensory, sonic and lighting equipment in space.
The responsive field - designed by the smart studio working together with servo - is a dynamic interactive audiovisual environment. Moving through the physical space will affect digital " agents" which exist in a hybrid physical/immaterial world. The movement of the agents will be rendered using lights in the modules and a 3D sound installation.
The project will be displayed at the exhibition Latent Utopias in Graz,
Austria, between 26 Oct. 2002 and 2 Mar. 2003.
Our physical environments are increasingly turning into hybrids of
build matter and digital effects, creating ephemeral organisations of
mixed realities occurring at and beyond their geographic location.
Most of the underlying technologies are modular and standardised (IP
networks, graphic formats, mobile technologies, etc..), yet the
scenarios and effects played out on those organisations can be highly
differentiated.
Converging the digital sense with the "lattice"
organisation is bringing the effects of communication networks and
dynamics of digital media into the experience spectrum of the visitor. One of the
major questions is how to establish a cognitive link between the ubiquitous and
ambient digital organisations, and the individual occupying them. Activating a
relationship between the exploring person and the dynamic responsive environment
is at the core of the design challenge.
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One of the 100 "lattice" modules that make up the physical installation.
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A number of distributed ‘sensitive’ modules are reacting on the proximity of people approaching and entering the hybrid field of the lattice, translating the motion of individuals into ambient spatial patterns in various media. Light and sound are used in particular to render these effects. The effects could be characterised as clustered immaterial voxels of light and sound, that are dynamically inter-related. The visitor is exercising an invisible force on those dynamic clusters, making them shift through the physical structure. Embedded sensor technology in the modules is enabling
this process.
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The modules are lit from within.
The lights travelling through the installation interacts with the environment and the visitors.
click image to enlarge
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Though the physical reality of the field is static, its hybrid whole is inherently dynamic. The abstract effects are deliberately affecting the more ambient, rather then cognitive senses in the visitor; the directionality and location of the light and sound occurrences will indicate the relationship. Still the effects are clearly located on the same experience time axis, as the visitor himself.
Inhabitants turn into visitors, users or even actors in these new spatial scenarios, which is spelling another shift in defining architecture as a form of shaping environments.
Locating spatial design in a time based interactive context is testing notions of architecture as a cultural concept.
>> animated model with more information on the dynamics of the responsive field.
©
2003 Smart Studio