The Dangerous Playground: "“Don’t stick your fingers in the socket! Stay away from the power lines! Never drop your blow dryer in the tub!”"

The sound advice your parents gave you was challenged at the 2010 Roskilde Festival.
IILLUTRON artists had created a playground of interactive installations that revolved around the safe/dangerous axis.

The festivalgoers were encouraged to counter-intuitively touch the power lines, stick their fingers into the sockets and dip electronics into a bathtub. Every act of defiance was rewarded with the thrilling production of light or sound.

The Sound9 installations pushed the limits of its participants, letting them go against their instincts, making them feel they are doing something bad, and then rewarding them for it.

The concept for The Cocoons (the large metal pods) was conceived by trying to break
away from the normal perception of shape. The Cocoons are pentagonal shapes stretching upward, so that the steel rods will eventually meet. Except that they’re cut off before they do, leaving a shape resembling broken crystal.

The inside of the cocoons hold a light control system and speakers, giving off an incredible light and sound symphony.

The vision for the Sound9 sound design was to create a soundscape powered by people’s curiosity. A sound tableau developing organically, never becoming static.
The installations collected playful touches and movements and transformed them into sounds, in a process that was direct and instant.

A mix of synthetic sounds and samples created an audio-canvas that came to life through people’s interaction. The sounds from the sockets were created from the pentatonic scale, meaning no matter the combination of sounds, they would always harmonize.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION:

All of the Sound9 installations were connected by one 600 meter long cable with just 5 wires, supplying power and balanced data connectivity for each of the daisy-chained Arduino-based modules that controlled the individual installations and constituted the nodes in the network. ILLUTRON developed the unique ICN (Interaction Control Network) serial protocol used, which allows fast and efficient two-way communication between all nodes in the network (up to ~240 nodes can be used simultaneously), with very low latency and high framerate.

The ICN protocol is designed with interactive art installations in mind, and makes it easy to gather signals from user-interaction with Arduino-attached sensors and process them in Max/MSP, OpenFrameworks or Processing (or whatever you like) over a USB-serial port adapter and then generate return signals for other nodes in the network, as well as audio and video content. The protocol has several advanced features for “plug-and-play” functionality, which allows for automatic pairing of input and output expression controls. As an example, one node may be just a novel sensor, e.g. a theremin-like proximity sensor, and another node may generate sounds or lights. Any such two nodes can be combined in the field with ICN, without geeks spending hours on a laptop to make it work. The intent is that this will allow future collaborative art projects where network nodes built by individual artists can be paired randomly and experimentally in the field to generate unexpected interaction. ILLUTRON intends to release ICN for public use under the Creative Commons license this year.

Many installations from Sound9 made a reappearance at KulturSYDhavn August 6-8th.”

Credits Below!

Dansk:

Hold fingrene fra stikkontakterne! Hold dig væk fra luftledningerne! Ikke tab din hårtørrer i badekarret!

De formaninger, dine forældre gav dig blev udfordret på Roskilde Festivalen 2010.
Illutronkunstnerne havde skabt en legeplads med interaktive installationer der bevægede sig i grænselandet mellem fare og sikkerhed.

Festivalgæsterne blev opfordret til, i mod deres instinkter, at røre ved luftledningerne, stikke fingrene i fatningerne og dyppe elektronik i badekarret. Udåden blev så præmieret med frembringelsen af lys eller lyd.

Sound9 installationerne skubbede til deltagernes grænser ved at få dem til at handle i mod deres sunde fornuft, få dem til at føle, at de havde gjort noget forkert, for så derefter at belønne dem.

Konceptet for The Cocoons (de store metalpupper) tog udgangspunt i et forsøg på at bryde med den normale opfattelse af form. The Cocoons er femkantede former som strækker sig opad, sådan så enderne på stålrørene bør mødes til sidst. Men fordi enderne er skåret af i toppen, mødes de aldrig, og det giver metalpupperne en form der minder lidt om smadrede krystaller.

Inde i The Cocoons er der lyskontrolpaneler og højtalere, som afgiver en fantastisk lys- og lydsymfoni.

Visionen for lyddesignet for Sound9 var, at skabe en lydunivers, som var drevet af folks nysgerrighed – et lydbillede som ville udvikle sig organisk og aldrig blive statisk.
Installationerne opsamlede folks legelystne bevægelse og berøringer og omformede dem til lyde i en direkte og umiddelbar proces.

En blanding af syntetiske lyde og samples dannede en grundlyd, som kunne animeres via folks interaktioner. Alle lydene var skabt på pentaskalaen, hvilket gjorde, at lige meget hvilken kombination lydene blev sat i, ville de altid harmonere med hinanden.

Mange af installationerne fra Sound9 dukkede op igen til KulturSYDhavn ved Illtron d. 6-8 august.”

Links to press mentions:
Kunsten.nu
Kunsten.nu

Sound9 by:

• Playful Power lines by: Jiazi Liu
• Bathtubs by: Jonas Jongejan, Lin Routhe Jørgensen, Sofie Kai Nielse
• Electrolumen Lamp installation by: Mads Høbye, Troels Christoffersen and Brian Josefsen
• Interactive poles by: Nikolaj Møbius, Sonny Windstrup, Christian Liljedahl
• Sockets by: Tobias Jørgensen, Halfdan Jensen
• Pods by: Christian Liljedahl, Halfdan Jensen, Sofus Walbom Kring and Philip Jun Kamata
• Sound Design by: Tobi Twang, Nikolaj Møbius

Design and construction

Bent Haugland, Christian Liljedahl, Emma Cecilia, Halfdan Jensen, Jacob Viuf, Jiazi Liu, Johan Bichel Lindegaard, Jonas Jongejan, Lasse Skov, Lin Routhe Jørgensen, Lizette Bryrup, Mads Hobye, Marie Viuff, Mathias Vejerslev, Mona Jensen, Nikolaj DZL Møbius, Nicolas Padfield, Philip Jun Kamata, Sally Jensen Ingvorsen, Schack Lindemann, Simo Ekholm, Sofie Kai Nielsen, Sofie Walbom Kring, Sofus Walbom Kring, Sonny Windstrup, Tobi Twang, Tobias Jørgensen, Troels Christoffersen, Vanessa Carpenter

Project leader: Nicolas Padfield

VIdeo Edited By: Nina Rydahl Andersen, see her Portfolio

Source Videos, TimeLapse by Mathias Vejerslev: by day
and by night