Provocate.org

Interactive media artist Scott Snibbe will present interactive works that incorporate reactive video projections, large-scale tracking of humans and vehicles, and Blow Up, which amplifies human breath as a large field of wind. He will discuss the philosophical divide between language and visceral perception that motivates his creation of interactive media art.

When: October 24, 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
Where: IUPUI, Informatics and Communications Technology Complex, IT 152 535 W. Michigan St.

According to the good people at Wikipedia:

Scott Snibbe is an interactive media artist. He often works with projector-based interactivity, where a computer-controlled projection onto the floor or ceiling changes in response to people moving across its surface. His first full-body interactive work Boundary Functions (1998), premiered at Ars Electronica 1998. In this floor-projected interactive artwork, people walk across a four-meter by four-meter floor. As they move, Boundary Functions uses a camera, computer and projector to draw lines between all of the people on the floor, forming a Voronoi Diagram. This diagram has particularly strong significance when drawn around people’s bodies, surrounding each person with lines that outline his or her personal space - the space closer to that person than to anyone else. Snibbe states that this work “shows that personal space, though we call it our own, is only defined by others and changes without our control.”

A PBS documentary about Snibbe explains his religious and philosophic intentions:

For more than a decade, Scott Snibbe has been combining interactive computer technology with Eastern philosophy to create artworks that are at once technologically sophisticated and hauntingly lyrical. In the Spark episode “Shaken and Stirred,” get a glimpse of his recent work, including the large-scale interactive sculpture “Blow Up.”

All of Snibbe’s work depends upon the participation of its audience to work. Using a projector-camera-recorder loop and Snibbe’s own recognition software, several of his pieces produce a kind of video based on participants’ actions. “Cause and Effect” (at Rx Gallery in November 2004) allowed audience members to produce projected silhouettes that trace their own movements. In “Shy” (at the Exploratorium through February 2005), a projected geometrical form timidly withdrew from participants’ advances.

Much of Snibbe’s work finds its roots in ideas that come from Buddhism. Snibbe attends several classes a week at the Tse Chen Ling Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies, in San Francisco. His concept of interactivity is closely related to the Buddhist belief that the central delusion of human existence is that each of us exists independently of everything else around us. Through their ceasing to exist without the input of participents, Snibbe’s interactive works demonstrate that all things are connected.

Designed for the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, “Blow Up” is Snibbe’s first large-scale sculptural piece. It is conceptually continuous with the works that came before it. Participants can blow into a set of sensors, which then activates a corresponding grid of industrial fans. Through the movement of the fans, the participant’s breath is both represented and amplified. The piece links breath to wind, connecting the personal with the cosmic, the inside of the body with the space that surrounds it, and demonstrating the lack of difference between the two.

Know before you go … Visit Snibbe’s website to see his work, and hear his ideas. PBS provided a useful instructor’s guide to Snibbe.

If this sounds interesting, check out … Animator Mark Simon will tell you how to use your new media skills for big bucks in Hollywood November 1.

Bookmark to:

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 15th, 2007 at 11:19 am and is filed under Events, Religion, Art, Buddhism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.