The artwork is a responsive installation with embedded interactive elements. It is responsive to the live environment via sensors and interactive with its embedded CCTV systems.
The artwork gathers data from the city (environment) via a custom made wireless sensor network. This is then represented virtually and then this virtual city is represented as this artwork installtion. The work becomes a manipulation of data, that ‘powers’ all the ‘events’ 'actions' and 'processes' in the installation.
The changing life in the city creates all the changes one experiences in the gallery space. The moving objects, fans, changing lights, motors, noises, that you encounter in the gallery are all responding to changes in temperature, light, pressure, noise, and the sound of the city outside.
The whole gallery space becomes one large artwork made from real time city information and data. The aesthetic and feel of the space looks like an electronic city. The city is made of units, grids, repetition , building blocks.
In the gallery city called 'Capacities: Life In The Emergent City' the leads, the wires,and cables are incorporated into the artwork to look like a city map.' Capacities' looks "designed" like a piece of urban design, a city surveyed and controlled. The whole space becomes a live emergent scultpure to wander through.
Concepts.
The real world is made virtual and the virtual is made real again and exposed in the process. This whole piece us a living and breathing artwork. The project focuses on the micro-incidents of change, the vibrations and sounds of the environment using wireless sensor based technologies.
We understand the 20thc in terms of atoms, molecules and gases that move. Our world is now a world of numbers and changing data and information. This art installation manipulates these numbers from the living real world and affects the installation in the gallery space in real time.
Capacities does this by capturing the change over time of the environment and respresenting changing life as an emergent artwork.
Stanza at Gogbot Festival Enshcede Holland. (slide viewer see 52 images)
VIDEO EXPLANATION OF THE ARTWORK
(ABOVE)
Installation version. Audience experience
The artwork is a responsive installation with embedded interactive elements. It is responsive to the environment via sensors and interactive with its embedded CCTV system.
The central piece “Capacities” in the gallery becomes a series of responsive events triggered by live events ie data. The installation responds to changes in the life of the city as it unfolds. On the floor there are hundreds electronic components: (Fans, Lead, Soleniods, Motors). The fans turn when the temperature changes, motors turn when the light changes. Technically these move in response to the wireless sensors networks I have deployed in the gallery and across the environment and these are monitoring the light, temperature, noise, humidity of the space and the city. As this data changes this wired artwork city changes. Inside the work are CCTV cameras that present feeds onto micro monitors in the work.
How
This project leverages the real time gallery space and the experience of the gallery visitor, using data gathered using new sensor technologies. The objective is to explore new ways of thinking about life and interaction within public space and how this affects the socialization of space. The project uses environmental monitoring technologies and security based technologies, to question audiences experiences of real time events and create visualisations of life as it unfolds. The interactions of all this data are re-formed and re-contextualised in real time artwork.
For the past four years I have been researching wireless sensor networks. I have developed the software (V2) and I can place sensor hardware to make the installation. This is a physical entity that one can see and hear to experience the real time and passage of time.
I use 40 motes sensors in a network. (this is technology I already have). This is tested, and I have custom built software that gathers data and places it online via a java proxy server. This then allows me to make artworks with the data. The data include GPS positions, humidity, noise, temperature, light, of the space and the surrounding environment. The interactions of all this data, controlled via interfaces that can re-form and re-contextualise experiences in real time. Representations of these data sets allow unique understanding of the gallery and the urban environment in real time.
The data is also used to create the visualizations in an open source environment. Because the data is networked other online users can also re- interpret the data and interrogate the various sensors in the network as this is open source as well (via xml streams online). The sensor network takes a constant stream of data which is published onto an online environment where each different interface makes representations of the XML and this is used to make an offline and one line artwork. I have tested the sensors, I have written custom software and the main boards are built. The sensors monitor temperature, sounds, noise, light, vibration, humidity, and GPS.
Capacities V2 was made in the Barn at Lanternhouse, in an Open Studio process. During the creation process, Stanza revealed the actual process; laying bare the reality of the work, physically by showing the machinery of the piece in progress and theoretically with a series of show-and-tell invitations to the public.
Experience The main artwork appears all over the floor. As you walk in the space the floor is a city of bits.
The sensors that are used to display the data are also used and exhibited across the gallery and the city.
Exhibition. Booking.
This works is available for exhibition and touring. Five days set up. Floor space painted white. 360 by 490 cm was size used last.
Projector needed to be above the work. Dark room is best.
The work ships in five boxes.
All artist fees, insurance, set up labour time, transport of work, travel, accommodation and all expenses, etc must be covered. email: stanza at sublime.net
Technology. How it Works.
I have 40 motes multi sensor network that are scattered thought the the building and across the city or location space. The nodes can be placed up to 50 -300 meters apart over the space. I am an expert in wireless sensor technologies as a result of my AHRC creative fellowship. Once switched on they gather the data. I have made two versions of the interface software and custom built software for real time data over networks. Mote proxy is a java middle-ware environment for connecting up xbow motes to get access to the data outside moteview and directly off the motes. It is now in version two and sits on our servers. It allows access to two networks of twenty motes in real time from which php and xml pages are served up. Mote proxy version two, and allows real time polling of data online from any sensors network that is connected and switched on, the data is then formatting in PHP and XML to enable anyone to make a visualization or interpretation of the data with it. The changing data is what affects what you see and experience. Live XML feeds form real time sensors when switched on. The sensors monitor temperature, sounds, noise, light, vibration, humidity, and gps.
The sensor network takes a constant stream of data which is published onto an online environment where each different interface makes representations of the XML.
Hardware Parts: List of Parts used
For floor piece Computer CPU cables, monitor, LED 7x5 matrix, PCB stand-off, Red square LED display, Yell rect LED display, White 3mm 12v LED Red 3mm 12v LE, Green 3mm 12v LED,
Angle brackets,
terminal block 2pin,
soft feet,
7 seg display 0.52 red cath,
7 seg display 0.52 red anode,
White Veroboard,
Plain Veroboard,
clip motors,
pull solenoid green 7x5 matrix,
green rect LED,
Akasa 60mm fan ,
Akasa 30mm fan ,
Motor 3v,
Motor 12v with reduction gearbox,
1.5” clear cone speaker,
rubber feet,
small push solenoid,
3.5mm bolts,
3.5mm nuts 3.5mm crinkle washers,
Red 16/02 wire,
Black 16/02 wire.
Cables.
capacity noun (capacities) 1 a the amount that something can hold b • as adj • a capacity crowd. 2 the amount that a factory, etc can produce. 3 (capacity for something) the ability or power to achieve it • capacity for change.
Sketches in studio and other works based on networks. ( the feel of the installation development ideas.)
Sensors that are used to collect the data in a network
Data as art.
Using the XML live feeds the data can be turned in music visual or to trigger physical events.
above... shows XML live feed example
Budget and funding.
Funding to make a larger version V2 of the prototype boards and all the components and test has been given by Lanternhouse International. Capacities was the next outcome of my research in the area of data visualisation and feels an important part of my practice as an artist. Many thanks to Lanternhouse International.
Note. Version 3 is available for funding.
Photos of Installation. Capacities V2 consists of thousands of parts.
About Stanza
Stanza is an internationally recognized artist, who has been exhibiting worldwide since 1984. His artworks have won prestigious painting prizes and ten first prize art awards including:- Vidalife 6.0 First Prize. SeNef Grand Prix. Videobrasil First Prize. Stanzas art has also been rewarded with a prestigious Nesta Dreamtime Award, an Arts Humanities Creative Fellowship and a Clarks bursary award.
His artworks have been exhibited globally with over fifty exhibitions in the last five years including:- Venice Biennale: Victoria Albert Museum: Tate Britain: Mundo Urbano Madrid: New Forest Pavilion Artsway: State Museum, Novorsibirsk. Biennale of Sydney, Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo Mexico: Plymouth Arts Centre: ICA London: Sao Paulo Biennale:
His mediums include; painting, video, prints, generative artworks and installations. Stanza is an expert in arts technology, CCTV, online networks, touch screens, environmental sensors, and interactive artworks. Recurring themes throughout his career include, the urban landscape, surveillance culture and alienation in the city.
Artistic Statement.
I am researching data within cities and the built environment and how this can be represented, visualized and interpreted. Data from security tracking, traffic, and environmental monitoring can all be interpreted as a medium to make artworks. I am investigating new ways of comparing, conceptualizing and then visualizing complex concepts related to the relationship of emergent data and real space in the built environment. Through practice based research, a series of modular experimental artworks are being created to express the possibilities for our data-mediated future.
There are three strands of my working process; these involve collecting the data, visualizing the data, and then displaying the data. The outputs from the online interfaces and online visualizations are now realized as real time dynamic artworks as diverse as installations, and real objects, made out of new display materials back in physical space. In all my work I try to exploit the changing dynamics of city life as a source for creativity and create meaningful artistic metaphors. I utilize new technologies and integrate new media artworks into the public domain as part of this ongoing research into the visualization of city space. In essence I am researching data as a medium for creativity and how meaningful experiences of our cities may result.
By investigating these data structures I aim to create new metaphors relevant to the experience of the environment. The patterns we make, the visual and imaginative interpretations we give to real world events, are already being networked into retrievable data structures that can be re-imagined and source for information. These patterns disclose new ways of seeing the world. The value of gathering and re-presenting this data in artistic form, and then analyzing its impact and influence, lies in making meaning accessible to a wider audience.
