Rivers

Interactive installation. Video, touch sensing and ambisonic/binaural sound.

Rivers is a media art installation piece that combines video, interactivity, tactile sensing and virtual reality audio. Rivers functions both as a documentary and creative experience that explores the rivers and ravines of Toronto through their soundscapes and video images. This experience is interactively augmented by the physical sensation of touching its water covered surface and producing meditative visual and sonic reactions as a response.

Rivers appears as a wooden box with a water covered acrylic top surface and a pair of headphones. The acrylic surface displays video images taken from rivers and ravines in the Toronto area while 3D audio soundscapes, captured in the same locations, can be simultaneously heard through headphones retrofitted with a head-tracking sensor (Ambisonic and Binaural processing). The touch interactions produce changes on the video images that simulate the effect of affecting small “virtual” white particles floating on the river and simultaneously generating sounds that change according to the movements of the hand and number of fingers placed on the acrylic surface. The soundscapes and the touch-generated sounds are delivered using 3D sound technology to create the aural sensation of physically being at the river location and of having the generated sounds move around the listener. The generated sounds also move in this virtual space following the same direction as the touch gestures.

Info

  • Technical: Wood box, acrylic panels, pico projector, Mac Mini, Leap Motion hand sensor, OpenFrameworks, Csound, LiquidFun, Arduino and IMU sensors (custom made headtracking for headphones).
  • Roles:: Solo work