"Blow-up" is a high resolution interactive display that is designed to fragment a surveillance camera view into 2400 virtual cameras that zoom into the exhibition space in fluid and autonomous motion. Inspired by Antonioni, the piece is intended as a an exercise to underline the construction of presence through a simulated, live compound eye.

[ More ]

"Close-up" is the third piece of the ShadowBox series of interactive displays with a built-in computerized tracking system. This piece shows the viewer's shadow revealing hundreds of tiny videos of other people who have recently looked at the work. When a viewer approaches the piece, the system automatically starts recording and makes a video of him or her. Simultaneously, inside the viewer's silhouette videos are triggered that show up to 800 recent recordings. This piece presents a schizoid experience where our presence triggers a massive array of surveillance videos.

[ More ]

"Homographies" is a large-scale interactive installation featuring a turbulent light array that responds to the movement of the public. The installation consists of 144 white fluorescent light tubes which are hung from 72 robotic fixtures on the ceiling of the exhibition space, equally spaced. Each light tube measures 1.83 m long and is rotated using a computer-controlled stepper motor. All lights are always on and typically constitute the only lighting in the exhibition hall, except for the natural light that spills into the space.

[ More ]

"Entanglement" is an interactive installation that consists of two identical neon signs each measuring 182 x 38 cm. The signs simply say the word "Entanglement" a term used in quantum physics to describe the strange property exhibited by two particles that behave as one. The two signs are to be placed in two separate rooms, even if they are in different cities. Under each sign there is a normal light switch that turns it on and off.

[ More ]

"Under Scan" is a public art installation based on self-representation. Thousands of "video-portraits" taken in Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Northampton and Nottingham are projected onto the ground; at first, the portraits are not visible because the space is flooded by white light coming from a high-powered projector. As people walk around the area, their shadows are cast on the ground, revealing the video-portraits in short sequences.

[ More ]

"Subtitled Public" consists of an empty exhibition space where visitors are detected by a computerised surveillance system. When people enter the space, the system generates a subtitle for each person and projects it onto him or her: the subtitle is chosen at random from a list of all the verbs conjugated in the third person. The only way of getting rid of a subtitle is to touch another person, which leads to the two subtitles being exchanged.

[ More ]

"Glories of Accounting" is an interactive installation with a surveillance system that detects the position of the public in the exhibition room. When someone walks into the room, large hands appear on the screen automatically. The hands rotate along their forearm axis, following the visitor with the open palms always facing him or her. As more people enter the room, more hands appear and each follows a member of the public.

[ More ]

"Synaptic Caguamas" is a kinetic sculpture consisting of a motorized Mexican “cantina” bar table with 30 “Caguama”-sized beer bottles (1-litre each). The bottles spin on the table with patterns generated by cellular automata algorithms that simulate the neuronal connections in the brain. Every few minutes the bottles are reset automatically and seeded with new initial conditions for the algorithm, so that the movement patterns are never repeated.

[ More ]

"Standards and Double Standards" is an interactive installation that consists of 10 to 100 fastened belts that are suspended at waist height from stepper motors on the ceiling of the exhibition room. Controlled by a computerized tracking system, the belts rotate automatically to follow the public, turning their buckles slowly to face passers-by. When several people are in the room their presence affects the entire group of belts, creating chaotic patterns of interference. Non-linear behaviours emerge such as turbulence, eddies and relatively quiet regions.

[ More ]

"Sitestepper" is an Internet program that shows a 3D view of an apparently "neutral" living room. This space can be transformed automatically by scanning a website to extract its images, texts, colours and sounds. The system analyzes the contents of the submitted webpage and uses them to furnish and decorate the room, "branding" the space with a layer of live media. This project was commissioned for LA MOCA's digital gallery.

[ More ]

"Frequency and Volume" enables participants to tune into and listen to different radio frequencies by using their own bodies. A computerised tracking system detects participants' shadows, which are projected on a wall of the exhibition space. The shadows scan the radio waves with their presence and position, while their size controls the volume of the signal. The piece can tune into any frequency between 150 kHz and 1.5 GHz, including air traffic control, FM, AM, short wave, cellular, CB, satellite, wireless telecommunication systems and radio navigation. Up to sixteen frequencies can be tuned simultaneously and the resulting sound environment forms a composition controlled by people's movements.

[ More ]

"1,000 Platitudes" is a large-scale photographic intervention project. It is comprised of photomontages and a video with 1,000 words or expressions commonly used to promote globalised cities to potential investors, such as “open”, “modern”, “clean”, “multicultural” and “cosmopolitan”, for example. To make these images, a powerful projector (110,000 ANSI lumens of intensity for images of up to 70 x 70 metres) was placed on a 12-ton truck with a generator.

[ More ]

"Amodal Suspension" is a large-scale interactive installation where people can send short text messages to each other using a cell phone or web browser. However, rather than being sent directly, the messages are encoded as unique sequences of flashes with twenty robotically-controlled searchlights, not unlike the patterns that make up Morse code. Messages bounce” around from searchlight to searchlight, turning the sky into a giant switchboard.

[ More ]

In this intervention the emblematic Place du Capitole in Toulouse was transformed by a projection of The Book of Two Origins, a 13th-century heretical manuscript compiling the theological beliefs of the dualist cathars. Once a vibrant community in several regions of Europe, the believers in the two origins of the Universe were virtually annihilated by the brutal crusades that gave birth to the Inquisition and France’s expansion. The texts are illegible since they are projected overlapping each other on the same façade from two distant projectors; only when passers-by block one text with their bodies is it possible to read the other text inside their shadow.

[ More ]

"Body Movies" transforms public space with interactive projections measuring between 400 and 1,800 square metres. Thousands of photographic portraits, previously taken on the streets of the host city, are shown using robotically controlled projectors. However the portraits only appear inside the projected shadows of the passers-by, whose silhouettes can measure between two and twenty-five metres depending on how close or far away they are from the powerful light sources positioned on the ground.

[ More ]

"33 Questions Per Minute" consists of a computer program which uses grammatical rules to combine words from a dictionary and generate 55 billion unique, fortuitous questions. The automated questions are presented at a rate of 33 per minute --the threshold of legibility-- on 21 tiny LCD screens encrusted on the support columns of the exhibition hall or mounted on a wall. The system will take over 3,000 years to ask all possible questions. A keyboard allows participants to log on to the building and add their own questions to the automatic flow.

[ More ]

"Vectorial Elevation" is an interactive art project originally designed to celebrate the arrival of the year 2000 in Mexico City’s Zócalo Square. The website www.alzado.net enabled any Internet user to design light sculptures over the city’s historic centre, with eighteen searchlights positioned around the square. These searchlights, whose powerful beams could be seen within a 15 kilometers radius, were controlled by an online 3D simulation program and visualised by digital cameras. A personalised webpage was produced for every participant with images of their design and information such as their name, dedication, place of access and comments.

[ More ]

"Re:Positioning Fear" was the third relational architecture project. A large scale installation on the Landeszeughaus military arsenal with a “teleabsence” interface of projected shadows of passers-by. Using tracking systems, the shadows were automatically focused and generated sounds. A real-time IRC discussion about the transformation of the concept of “fear” was projected inside the shadows; the chat involved 30 artists and theorists from 17 countries and the proceedings can be seen at the project web site: hizome.org/artbase/2398/fear/

[ More ]

"Displaced Emperors" was an installation that used an “architact” interface to transform the Habsburg Castle in Linz, Austria. Wireless 3D sensors calculated where participants pointed to on the façade and a large animated projection of a hand was shown at that location. As people on the street "caressed" the building, they could reveal the interiors of the Habsburg residence in Mexico City, Castillo de Chapultepec.

[ More ]

"The Able Skin" is a media structure designed by architect Emilio López-Galiacho to hide any emblematic building that is not allowed to have a natural death, that is kept alive artificially through restoration, citation and simulation. A virtual reality installation allows participants to tour the first Able Skin, which covers Palladio's Villa Rotonda. The participant’s motion controls the point of view in the projected environments on the wall and the floor.

[ More ]

"The Trace" is a telepresence installation that invites two participants in remote sites to share the same telematic space. The piece consists of light vectors, sounds and graphics that respond to the movement of the participants. Two interactive stations are needed for the piece; these are interconnected with a normal ISDN digital line so they can be in the same exhibition hall, on either side of a city or in different cities.

[ More ]

"Surface Tension" is an interactive installation where an image of a giant human eye follows the observer with orwellian precision.This work was inspired by a reading of Georges Bataille’s text The Solar Anusduring the first Gulf War – first wide-spread deployment of camera-guided “intelligent bombs”. Present-day computerised surveillance techniques employed by the Department of Homeland Security in the United States through the Patriot Act, provide a new and distressing backdrop for this piece

[ More ]