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by Paul Hertz

Pond presents a process of interaction with people as an artist’s installations. Within the installation, visitors wave their hands over light sensitive rods to trigger video and sound events on a projection screen hung above a modular sculpture. The sculpture reproduces a pattern generated during the process of interaction, which involves engaging individuals I meet in a pattern-making game. There is a pattern each person generates, the sound of a person’s voice pronouncing his or her name, and photographic snapshot of the person’s face become raw material for the installation. The sequencing of events is governed by a directed graph and parametric space derived from the pattern in the floor sculpture. In Pond seemingly unrelated events are linked by architecture of the installation and by underlying structures that eleven through time. Each installation of Pond can have different images and sounds.

I am planning a future version that will add touch sensitivity to the light-sensitive rods—in the installation people felt the urge to touch them, which I will exploit rather than circumvent.

Pond uses a Macintosh PowerPC 8600/300 with a SampleCell II digital audio synthesizer, MacroMedia Director, HyperMIDI, and Opcode's MAX software. The I-CubeX voltage-to-MIDI interface manages the inputs from the sensors. 

30 july 1998