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| The responsive field of lattice archipelogics Lattice archipelogics is an installation designed by Servo where a partnership was formed with the smart studio to design the interactive apects of the installation - what we call the responsive field. Servo designed a hundred plastic modules with cavities and conduit capable of holding wiring, sensory, sonic and lighting equipment in space. The responsive field - designed by the smart studio working together with servo - is a dynamic interactive audiovisual environment. Moving through the physical space will affect digital " agents" which exist in a hybrid physical/immaterial world. The movement of the agents will be rendered using lights in the modules and a 3D sound installation. Our physical environments are increasingly turning into hybrids of build matter and digital effects, creating ephemeral organisations of mixed realities occurring at and beyond their geographic location. Most of the underlying technologies are modular and standardised (IP networks, graphic formats, mobile technologies, etc..), yet the scenarios and effects played out on those organisations can be highly differentiated. Converging the digital sense with the "lattice" organisation is bringing the effects of communication networks and dynamics of digital media into the experience spectrum of the visitor. One of the major questions is how to establish a cognitive link between the ubiquitous and ambient digital organisations, and the individual occupying them. Activating a relationship between the exploring person and the dynamic responsive environment is at the core of the design challenge. One of the 100 "lattice"modules that make up the physical installation. A number of distributed ‘sensitive’ modules are reacting on the proximity of people approaching and entering the hybrid field of the lattice, translating the motion of individuals into ambient spatial patterns in various media. Light and sound are used in particular to render these effects. The effects could be characterised as clustered immaterial voxels of light and sound, that are dynamically inter-related. The visitor is exercising an invisible force on those dynamic clusters, making them shift through the physical structure. Embedded sensor technology in the modules is enabling this process. Though the physical reality of the field is static, its hybrid whole is inherently dynamic. The abstract effects are deliberately affecting the more ambient, rather then cognitive senses in the visitor; the directionality and location of the light and sound occurrences will indicate the relationship. Still the effects are clearly located on the same experience time axis, as the visitor himself. Inhabitants turn into visitors, users or even actors in these new spatial scenarios, which is spelling another shift in defining architecture as a form of shaping environments. Locating spatial design in a time based interactive context is testing notions of architecture as a cultural concept. Behaviour model Description 1. The bigger boxes represent the value stored in the memory of each cell. The orientation of the box represents the direction it will give to agents passing through it, the grey tones the acceleration. 2. The Blue boxes are the sensors (with simulated reactions, in this case) distributed through the space. 3. The small black boxes are the agents. Engine The algorithm for the installation is based in a model shared by processes as diverse as the formation of anthills, cities, glaciers, river basins, and even learning: a morphogenetic process that is based in positive reinforcement or amplification and in equilibrium seeking feedback loops. The main mechanism by which these feedbacks are implemented is through processes similar to those of sedimentation and crystallisation (positive feedback) and erosion (negative feedback). Components Besides the interface of the senors, there are two basics components of the system: 1. the agents, which are the active components of the software, they ae basic "activity tropistic" automata, which, as moths to light, react to the activity levels reported by the sensors, as well as to theinformation stored on the cells. 2. The cells, which function as the memory of the lattice space, which the agents relentlessly imprint with their movement patterns. In return, the cells affect the movement of the agents passing though them, modifing their trajectories according to the values left on them by agents in the past. Sentient Space Though such mechanism the space of the Lattice is given the ability to learn: disturbances produced in the Responsive Field may suvive and persist, canalising agents though them, and thus be reiteratively reinforced and amplified by their constant flow. Others will be slowly eroded (smoothen out) and forgotten. The device will be able to "learn" inhabitation patterns as aset of state transitions, attractor basins, gradients on the field. There are two essential moods of the Responsive Field: one of engagement in interaction, when there is some activity sensed, which will force the agents to rect and record the occupation events on the cells. Another one functionally analogous to the state of dreaming, when there is no input from the sensors, and in which the agents will wonder though the lattice following the traces of previous events, amplifying some patterns, letting some others disappear. |
