New technology has changed the potential of art. It no longer needs to be a static element, but can now be something that is interacted with and controlled by the user. This idea of interactive art is the basis for my senior project for the Ammerman Center for Arts and Technology.

I was first exposed to the idea of interactive art by Camille Utterback's Untitled 5: External Measures Series. In this piece the movement of the user is tracked by a camera hung from the ceiling.  As the user moves their movements are traced on a canvas, with a unique paintbrush texture and color assigned to the user when they entered the space.  More information about this piece can be found on Camille Utterback’s website.

My interactive piece, instead of using motion capture like Camille Utterback’s piece, relies upon speech recognition for interactive triggers.  It also uses a composite photo background, developed from 10 different photos that I took while in New Zealand, and animation for the visual reactions to the keyword triggers.  Each visual reaction is accompanied by a specific sound effect.  There are three main interactive elements to this piece. 

The user can affect a bird, a waterfall, and the time associated with the image in front of them.  When the user says bird, a kea, which I modeled and animated using MAYA, flies either into or out of the image.  The kea has two other interactive elements, which are singing and laughing.  The waterfall, when affected, flows and becomes slightly transparent with each triggering.  The user can also switch the image from day to night.

The piece was installed for three days in the Alice Johnson room at Connecticut College as a part of the senior show.  The installation time allowed me to not only explore the idea of interaction, but to also understand the problems associated with speech recognition as a method of control for a speech recognition system.  Overall it turned out to be a wonderful experience, that once improved, could turn out to be a highly viable art piece.

The visual version of this piece can be seen on the project page.  However, this web-version cannot depend on speech recognition, but is controlled by key presses.