Tom White, David Small: Stream of Consciousness

Artist(s):

• Tom White
• David Small

Title:

Stream of Consciousness

Exhibition:

• SIGGRAPH 1998: Touchware

Creation Year:

1997

Medium:

Water, stone, copper, bamboo, liquid-haptic interface, projector

Size:

10' x 6' x 6'

Category:

• Interactive & Monitor-Based

Keywords:

• interactive
• interface

Artist Statement:

The interactive poetic garden is literally a fountain of words. Water flows briskly down a series of cascades into a glowing pool. A tangle of words projected on the surface of the pool floats like leaves in a stream. The computer drives a video projector, creating the illusion of text floating on the surface of the water as it flows through the garden. A person sitting on the wooden bench that faces the garden can stop the word flow, push and pull words, block or stir them up, change the content of the words themselves, and cause them to grow and divide into new words that are eventually pulled into the drain then pumped back to the head of the stream, only to tumble down again.

This project attempts to bring the computer into the garden in harmony with stone, water, and plant materials. It is one of the experiments underway in the MIT Media Lab’s Aesthetics and Computation Group, which is sculpting computational media into new expressive forms.