point, line, surface computed in seconds _ interactive audio-visual installation
published at:
interactive architecture.org
article by Ruairi Glynn
LAb[au]'s installation 'Point, Line, Surface computed in seconds ', (2005) the user creates out of simple interactions a sound and image environment. Interaction is similar to drawing on a plane. A sonic / visual composition is gradually build out of the drawing movements of the user resulting not only in visual objects moving on the screen and the projection but also to sounds moving thanks to the 4 speakers setup and sound spatialization algorithms. The installation is an instrument which like any instrument has its own codes and modalities. The aesthetic work consists here to build this codes, linking shapes [ shapes are "types" or "topologies", in this case: point, lines, planes,... ] with colors and sounds. Out of this linking is created an aesthetic order producing meaning.
Each created soundscape can be recorded and called back at any moment. The recording takes in account the parameter of time [third axis=z] in the creation of a 3d display of the composition. Each of these times based towers are place on a common grid according to two parameters: 1: the % of density and the % of motion. These two parameters qualify in different manners the audience interaction while confronting it to time/space related parameters of the sonic construct. The common grid slowly creates a geometric pattern of space-time indexed objects_ the sound towers.
Here the grid directly refers to Mondriaans synaesthetic ideas of the 'boggie woggie', in-between color sound and space, as on indexing parameters, the two dimensional grid. But the simple display of the grid and the isometric towers turns spatial through the topprojection and quadraphonic sound,
immerging the user in his individual space of sound & motion as on the common level in a collective space, the installation as the grid indexing, the collective sound database.