I always wondered how people created experiences that were felt, cherished, enjoyed and responded to. How does one captivate a crowd? How does art in public spaces work? The 33rd Convocation at NID gave me an opportunity to conduct a little experiment of my own that allowed me to see how people are brought together in a space, to perform a certain task–to undergo a certain experience that is designed for them.
With the help of Pratheek Iravathur and Aaditi Rokade, and an extremely amateur knowledge of code, or any sort of interactive art, I set out to create a little experience for the visitors, as part of the exhibition.
Our generative system gave users an opportunity to create unlimited visuals in real time using their voice inputs. All they needed to do was to interact amongst each other, shout, dance, or tell us how much they love this little installation of ours; and the system would generate visuals in accordance with the loudness of the voice input. So we basically ended up creating a sound visualizer that you find on your mp3 players, and projected it on a walkway. The only difference being that instead of the visualization being based on a song, it was based on real time audio input from the users.
