Video
The test of any good installation is how children respond and few I’ve seen get this kind of intuitive response. Theo Watson and Emily Gobeille, made ‘Funky Forest‘ which premiered at the 2007 Cinekid festival in the Netherlands. ‘Funky Forest’ is an interactive ecosystem where children create trees with their body and then divert the water flowing from the waterfall to the trees to keep them alive. The health of the trees contributes to the overall health of the forest and the types of creatures that inhabit it.
Funcky Forest was made with openFrameworks which Theo is involved in developing.
November 20th, 2007
Evoke by Architect & Artist Usman Haque is a massive animated 80,000 lumen projection, that lights up the facade of York Minster. The facade is brought to life by members of the public, who use their own voices to "evoke" colourful light patterns that emerge at the building’s foundations and soar up towards the sky, giving the surface a magical feeling as it melts with colour.
The cathedral, built to link conceptually earth to the heavens, has been a site for the conveyance of words, dreams and aspirations for hundreds of years. The facade is designed to orient the gazes of passers-by upwards. As an attempt to continue this tradition, the patterns of Evoke are generated in realtime by the words, sounds, music and noises produced collectively by the public, determined by their particular voice characteristics. The colours will skim the surface of the Minster, pour round its features and crevasses, emerging finally near the top of the facade where they will sparkle high overhead.
People with voices of different frequencies, rhythms or cadences will be able to evoke quite different magical patterns upon the surface of the building – a staccato chirping will result in a completely different set of visual effects to a long howl for example, blending old and new to continue animating the facade of the Minster.
Evoke is commissioned by Illuminating York 2007.
November 1st, 2007