ARTIST: Accelerator Group (Bioluster Participants include Artists Jite Agbro & Meghan Trainor with Developer Stephen Koch and Carpenter Patrick Kerr)
TITLE: Bioluster
MATERIALS: Mac Powerbook G4 laptop running RFID Builder, [a custom Flash application built for use with Phidgets RFID readers] with xml & audio files, RFID tags, Phidgets RFID reader, stitched encaustic prints, ball chain, rubber, powdered graphite, foam, acrylic paint, wooden supports, power strip, found cables, electrical cord fragments.
DIMENSIONS: 20' width of wall
DATE: 2007
DESCRIPTION: "Bioluster" is a large-scale tactile interface that offers simple, yet not immediately obvious, methods of triggering different series of sound samples. The interactive audio interface is paired with materials and shapes that leave the audience with a tugging sense of unwarranted nostalgia for a system that has never existed. Viewers are encouraged to pass the hanging graphite & control objects over the RFID reader embedded at the edge of the encaustic sculptural form to trigger brief audio samples. A relatively simple set of rules governing the audio samples is discernible after a short time of interacting with the piece. A key component of the installation is the effect of the powdered graphite objects on the wall space near the reader and the reader area itself. Over time the graphite will accumulate a series of marks, in essence a drawing created by the audience.
STATEMENT: Accelerator Group is a variable group of artists, programmers, and other participants who collaborate to create performances, artistic prototypes, installations, and other works that explore emerging technologies in the context of tactile material interfaces and components. Accelerator Group also examines the impact of technology on the creative and collaborative process itself. Members reside in Seattle and New York with distance collaboration a key element of our process. Members not directly participating in this project include choreographer Ophra Wolf and ceramicist Michelle Anderson. These projects have grown out of Trainor's long use of RFID as an artistic medium to explore our changing physical relationship to computing. View the work in progress on our flickr page.
CONTACT:
Meghan Trainor
Seattle, WA
megtra AT gmail.com