Brief

Create an interactive installation to entertain the audience at DiGI:Wave, an electronic music event. The event is held at DGI Byen, a public swimming bath in the center of Copenhagen.

Description

On the bottom of a round paddle basin a flock of glowing bugs swim around avoiding the obstacles on their way. One of the obstacles is a floating light that can be poked around.

Concept

A part of DGI Byen has been infected – not with an organic bacteria, but with a virtual virus. The installation poses questions regarding the borderland between real and virtual by underlining similarity of malfunction in the two worlds.

Process

I worked closely together with Daniel Høier Øhrgaard, BA in design and innovation at DTU (Danish Technical University). We developed and tested the installation at an art gallery during the culture days in Kolding (#4) before setting it up in full size at the DiGI-Wave event (#3).

Thanks

Jakob Weigand Goetz, for being an understanding and effective organiser. Daniel, for saving my butt during the last crazy minutes of calibrating.

Tech

Daniel drew heavily on Craig Reynold's work on flocking behaviours (a.k.a. boids). The project was realised in Processing. We used a library called Blob Detection to track infrared light from the floating candle.