Filtration Fields (Joanne Jakovich & Jason McDermott 2009)
Recently Joanne and I were given the opportunity to exhibit in the DAB Lab Research Gallery at UTS, in the Design, Architecture and Building faculty building, as an opportunity to refine and showcase our collective research into realtime responsive architectural environments.
[view from inside DAB Lab Gallery, taken during prior exhibition installation]
The filtration fields exhibition in the DAB Lab gallery was a realtime interactive installation using simple camera tracking to measure daily activity within the DAB courtyard. The exhibition was as a prototype test for ideas on the overlap of surveillance information and participation in architecture by its' inhabitants. Our premise for the installation was that the architecture of the DAB Lab gallery and surrounding courtyard space would be given eyes and ears, a brain to consider and a mouth to speak its' mind. The exhibition space of filtration fields was, unlike all pieces held in the DAB Lab, not the space of the gallery itself but the outside world upon which it had a threshold. The silent box would become an active element in the architecture of the courtyard, no longer only passively inviting people inside but actively seeking to make its opinions known. The void space of the courtyard would act as a performance stage for the activities and life of the DAB, and the natural bookend to the void was an appropriately matching wall of glass facing the space of the gallery.
[filtration fields sketch diagrams, showing proposed sensor locations, internal projection concept]
The DAB gallery sits nestled under the canopy of one side in the DAB courtyard, standing as a window into another world, a place of existence in the imagined mind of another. All of our experiences in the DAB Lab gallery were of surprise and delight, the little gallery had observed us and prepared something appropriate to show.
My initial thoughts for the piece revolved around an image I had imagined of the DAB Lab gallery space existing as a small part of a sensory system extending the fabric of the whole building - the glass wall fronting onto the courtyard was in fact the glass lens of a large and ever curious eye. The rear wall of the gallery would be the retina upon which the useful information would be refracted and transferred for processing elsewhere. Other senses of the building were to be placed in the surrounding architecture outside, remote senses (microphones as ears, light/temp/hum/vibration as skin) of a much larger organism. Each of the senses would be dislocated but connected, each informing the other regarding the goings-on of people in the courtyard.
As the project took shape, it became clear that the focus of the exhibition should not only be the 'eye' of the DAB, but rather the effort to interpret the overlay of many eyes, ears and other senses into information, all representing the happenings in the courtyard. The focus of the exhibition is not the DAB Lab itself, but the affect it could have on the lives of people moving through the space in-between. Each of the glass wall panels would form opposing viewpoints on the courtyard, illustrating different relationships between the viewer/participant and the data they created. The concept of the DAB as being a semi-conscious entity gave us the notion of eyes (an overload of information, all visual and uninterpreted for meaning) and brains (filtered information, abstracted for patterns of activity).
More to come..
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