Booklet: Calcification (2007)

Calcifications

CALCIFICATIONS Nov. 2007

Calcifications Developed by Mette Ramsgard Thomsen, Chiron Mottram, Martin Tamke, Karin Bech, Kristine Agergaard Jensen and Norbert Palz.

Centre for IT and Architecture in collaboration with the Virtual Environments Group, Bartlett School of Architecture Calcification is sponsored by JAKON A/S who kindly CNC milled the projection table.

Calcifications takes place on a table and around the cultural practice of sharing a glass of wine, In Calcifications the table is an active partner. Rather than projecting onto a blind surface, as such it finds stability within a known social practice where the rules of engagement are known. Calcifications seeks to engage the material presence of the interface, making it, its depths and hollows, part of the interactive game. To develop the table we held a party in which guests were Inheriting a set of questions explored in the parallel project Sea Unsea, Calcifications seeks to asked to share a glass of wine. The glasses were stamps and as the guest drank they marked find a new site, or place, to engage with the exploration of a live digital environment. the tablecloth. As the party moved on the mark got fainter, as such allowing a notation of the temporal dimensionality of the situation.

Finding its site within a social practice, rather than a place, Calcifications seeks a culturally defined situation shared through accepted manners and holding a particular temporal extension. The tablecloths are used as cutting planes for the final table top, thereby relating the past event We know what it means to drink wine – that it is something we do together, how long it takes, to the future use. The cuts, folds and indentations creates hollows that invite the user to place that it is something we do to appreciate the pleasure of a moment together, to suggest to each their glass. Just as saucer anticipates the teacup, the terrain prepares for its use. At its most other an accordance. radical, the perforation become dark areas attracting the virtual agents in the same way as our interactions.

Calcifications is suggested through a series of props. The table, the glasses and the wine, allows us to engage, or interact in both digital and physical space in a simple manner. The tables is simultaneously the interface, with its camera mounted below looking up at the transparent surface, with the digital environment projected upon it acting and reacting on the dark colour of the wine.

Calcifications was exhibited at the ArchiTronics festival at the Danish Architecture Centre, Nov The interface builds on the dance-architecture project Sea Unsea and developed in collaboration 08. with Chiron Mottram at the Virtual Environments Group at the Bartlett School of Architecture.

Building upon their Crowd Visualisation software, Calcifications and Sea Unsea explores the digital as a live space, an ecology of growth and decay. Here, virtual agents see the picture plane Calicifications is sponsored by JAKON A/S of the table, and through simple rule based behaviour act upon the changes they see.

Users come to the table to explore. As they learn that the agents follow the dark colours of the wine, they also see that the shadow of their hand can play the same trick.

The visual scapes of the agents are temporalised differently. In some the agents move swiftly to negotiate the changing surface, while in others the agents seem content grow slow landscapes around the dark colour.

Opening party at DAC exhibition, Nov 2007

CITA / Centre for Information Technology and Architecture

CALCIFICATIONS Nov. 2007

Calcifications takes place on a table.

The table holds the memory of a party.

To establish the terrain of the table we asked our guests to share a glass of wine around a table prototype. The wineglasses had stamps under them and the guests drank they could mark the table in response to the live drawing of the agents. The stamps draw the temporality of this game as the marks get weaker across time.

How can a practice become a sit e f o r i nteraction?

The resulting table cloth was used as a

glass stamp tests encoding time and pressure screenshots from camera

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CITA / Centre for Information Technology and Architecture

CALCIFICATIONS Nov. 2007

How does mark making in the di g i t a l s h a r e t r a d i t i o n s with other forms of marking?

A camera is mounted beneath the table. The camera picture plane is used as a live site for a swarm of virtual agents that act and react on the changes within their environment. The agents are vision based and what they *see* are shifts in darkness, as they become attracted by the dark shadows of the glass. The projection plane of the table top is the dynamic interactive environment through which the agents shape their movement. these are visualised as point spaces, particle clouds that expand and contract as their movement score evolves. Line drawings, in the form of dynamic meshes, are spun across these fields, engaging the temporality of action.

camera view from under table and resulting realtime visualisation

CITA / Centre for Information Technology and Architecture

CALCIFICATIONS Nov. 2007

What does it mean to draw acro s s t i m e a n d h o w c a n m o v e m e n t r elate to form? What are the differ e n t t e m p o r a l i t i e s t h a t a r e e m b o died, histories and memories?

resulting table cloth from initial party

CITA / Centre for Information Technology and Architecture

CALCIFICATIONS Nov. 2007

The table cloth becomes the draft for the development of a deep drawing. The deep drawing holds the tensions, the pressure, of the past party, creating a 3D terrain that readies itself towards its use. Like the saucer, its dips and folds, points towards the wine glass that will inhabit it. The table is no-longer the void surface of the projection plane, but anticipates and directs its use.

Test of projection on 3D terrain

CITA / Centre for Information Technology and Architecture

CALCIFICATIONS Nov. 2007

The table is designed to hold the deep drawing and projection terrain within the context of the domestic. Referencing traditions of furniture design, the table seeks to establish a site for interaction.

The height of the table allows for lounging and the size for intimacy.

In the same way the glasses are deformed, as if accounting for the past party.

CITA / Centre for Information Technology and Architecture