Background: Located on the beach near the Pier in an area that had been specifically landscaped over the course of several days, and making use of a large-scale outdoor waterscreen/mist projection system, the mirage-like installation glowed with colours and ebullient patterns created in response to the competing and collaborative voices, music and screams of people nearby. Responding to sounds emanating from the crowd, the system’s modes changed every few minutes depending on how active the crowd participation was (more quickly when there was more noise). Each mode responded in a slightly different way to the individual voices and sounds picked up by 8 microphones distributed towards the front. Some modes created “creatures” whose colour, shape and movement followed the frequency and amplitude dynamics of individual syllables and sentences picked up; other modes responded to wider collective phenomena, e.g. distorting a grid in response to the crowd volume, or creating a rush of wind through a wheat-field landscape.

Designer: Usman Haque: The London-based architect and artist Usman Haque designs interactive architectural systems and is interested in the ways that people relate to each other and to their surrounding space. He develops both physical spaces and the software and systems that bring them to life. In other words, these systems based on the software’s algorithms fulfil several functions: the detection of a position in space, of a sound, of an odour, of the temperature, of a cellular phone, etc.

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