tGarden
TGarden is an interdisciplinary project exploring methods of artistic expression and social interaction in mixed reality. The project originated in a partnership between FoAM in Brussels and sponge in San Francisco. The direct and tangible result of the project is a responsive Play Space whose visitors shape the media environment around them through their movement, gesture and social interaction. TGarden was developed in collaboration with several art and technology centers (including Georgia Institute of Technology, Ars Electronica, V2, Banff Centre for the Arts) and a number of independent artists, technologists and scientists from Europe, USA and Australia.
The letter “T” in the title of this project stands for 'topology', 'time', 'tea'. The “Garden” is an emergent region, balancing between autonomous wilderness and a cultivated work of art. A site that evolves on its own accord, but can be molded extensively by its care-takers and temporary dwellers.
TGarden is, first and foremost, a built space that the visitors can inhabit. Second, it is a growing environment in which the visitors can comfortably linger, surrounded by responsive media, and third, an instrument that allows the visitors to (collaboratively) shape and modify the environment's processes of growth, decay and transformation.
There are no users in the TGarden, nor tasks to be solved. The space is not there to be navigated or searched but rather to hang out and dance in. The movement of players' bodies is used by the TGarden's nervous system (hardware and software network) to shape visual, aural and tactile media. The gestures - that are not so different from everyday gestures such as touching, brushing along other bodies, dancing, stretching and falling are an impetus for the generative processes in TGarden. Ultimately, the virtuosity of the players should grow through the interaction with the TGarden system, and allow them to actualize their imagination.
public project page: http://f0.am/tgarden
ongoing
reading
“TGarden: Wearable Instruments and Augmented Physicality” by Ryan and Salter http://www.music.mcgill.ca/musictech/nime/onlineproceedings/Papers/NIME03_Ryan.pdf
forthcoming, sha/visell/etc+
nik