This is the re­sult of a se­ries of video in­stal­la­tion ex­per­i­ments where space is a fun­da­men­tal fac­tor. We record­ed small ev­ery­day ac­tions with the in­ten­tion to use them in space, see how they could work and try to change their con­text in some way. Space can give dif­fer­ent mean­ings to ev­ery video and can po­ten­tial­ly make the view­er won­der what he is look­ing at… We fi­nal­ly chose and record­ed the ac­tion of laugh­ing with the in­ten­tion to pro­ject these videos on a se­ries of win­dows. Video and sound are ac­ti­vat­ed (start­ing to laugh) when some­one pass­es in front of the win­dow.
With space as a fun­da­men­tal fac­tor in our in­ter­ac­tive video in­stal­la­tion we record­ed the ac­tion of laugh­ing with the in­ten­tion to use the videos in space and see how they work and in which way the con­text is changed.
Space can give dif­fer­ent mean­ings to ev­ery video and can po­ten­tial­ly make the view­er won­der what he is look­ing at…
In our pre­vi­ous pre­sen­ta­tion of the work, we chose to pro­ject the videos on win­dows fac­ing a street near clubs and main tram stops. Video and sound were ac­ti­vat­ed (start­ing to laugh) when some­one pass­es in front of the win­dow. The videos were pro­ject­ed in small scale so that they fit the win­dows and the sound was gen­er­at­ed by piez­zo elec­tric el­e­ments at­tached on the win­dows, so the win­dows them­selves were vi­brat­ing and act­ing as speak­ers.
The in­stal­la­tion was work­ing all day long and the pro­ject­ed fig­ures were “laugh­ing” at a wide range of peo­ple pass­ing by, from peo­ple walk­ing to their work or wait­ing for their tram, to peo­ple com­ing from the clubs next door to uri­nate, caus­ing dif­fer­ent kind of re­ac­tions.
Each video is back pro­ject­ed on one win­dow. The win­dows are paint­ed with a thin lay­er of semi­trans­par­ent white paint. The area in front of the win­dows is mon­i­tored by a surveil­lance cam­era and when peo­ple pass the mo­tion de­tec­tion is trans­ferred through a mi­cro con­troller to the com­put­er. With the use of Max/Msp/Jit­ter soft­ware, the video and the sound is trig­gered. The sound from the com­put­er is am­pli­fied and sent to the piez­zo elec­tric el­e­ments that are at­tached on the win­dows and vi­brate them, mak­ing them act as speak­ers. When there is no mo­tion de­tect­ed the videos go back to a stand­by video loop po­si­tion which is silent.