Uncanny Valley
This interactive art piece was created as part of the "Made in Kolding" exhibition at Staldgården in Kolding. It was a 3-way collaboration between Peter Frigaard, Behrang Hakami, and myself.
The Uncanny Valley is the space between something feeling human, and artificial. It evokes a particular emotion that we wanted to explore. One of the ways we tried evoking this emotion was using a severed head and torso, and plastering them with knobs and wires, respectively. This created an interesting dissonance between the human form and technology.
The video here is a full walkthrough of the piece. Please watch with stereo headphones for the best experience.
We wanted the piece to be very responsive. This made for two different states, a non-interactive soundscape and a responsive "megasynth", all played through a transducer inside a metal cabinet, paired with a subwoofer.
The soundscape was sort of the "default" state, so when no interaction was happening, there was still an ambience going on. A depth sensor was set to trigger when someone stood in front of the head, to then activate the second state. In this state, all the different knobs on the head changed different parameters of a custom-made Max4Live synth.
When people stepped away from the head, it would go back to the default state after a couple of seconds.
Final look
Boring holes for the knobs
Body tie test
Lighting test
Concept render
Uncanny Valley
This interactive art piece was created as part of the "Made in Kolding" exhibition at Staldgården in Kolding. It was a 3-way collaboration between Peter Frigaard, Behrang Hakami, and myself.
The Uncanny Valley is the space between something feeling human, and artificial. It evokes a particular emotion that we wanted to explore. One of the ways we tried evoking this emotion was using a severed head and torso, and plastering them with knobs and wires, respectively. This created an interesting dissonance between the human form and technology.
The video here is a full walkthrough of the piece. Please watch with stereo headphones for the best experience.
We wanted the piece to be very responsive. This made for two different states, a non-interactive soundscape and a responsive "megasynth", all played through a transducer inside a metal cabinet, paired with a subwoofer.
The soundscape was sort of the "default" state, so when no interaction was happening, there was still an ambience going on. A depth sensor was set to trigger when someone stood in front of the head, to then activate the second state. In this state, all the different knobs on the head changed different parameters of a custom-made Max4Live synth.
When people stepped away from the head, it would go back to the default state after a couple of seconds.
Final look
Boring holes for the knobs
Body tie test
Lighting test
Concept render
Uncanny Valley
This interactive art piece was created as part of the "Made in Kolding" exhibition at Staldgården in Kolding. It was a 3-way collaboration between Peter Frigaard, Behrang Hakami, and myself.
The Uncanny Valley is the space between something feeling human, and artificial. It evokes a particular emotion that we wanted to explore. One of the ways we tried evoking this emotion was using a severed head and torso, and plastering them with knobs and wires, respectively. This created an interesting dissonance between the human form and technology.
The video here is a full walkthrough of the piece. Please watch with stereo headphones for the best experience.
We wanted the piece to be very responsive. This made for two different states, a non-interactive soundscape and a responsive "megasynth", all played through a transducer inside a metal cabinet, paired with a subwoofer.
The soundscape was sort of the "default" state, so when no interaction was happening, there was still an ambience going on. A depth sensor was set to trigger when someone stood in front of the head, to then activate the second state. In this state, all the different knobs on the head changed different parameters of a custom-made Max4Live synth.
When people stepped away from the head, it would go back to the default state after a couple of seconds.
Final look
Boring holes for the knobs
Body tie test
Lighting test
Concept render