Thawing colours: dangling from the fuzzy end of interfaces

Abstract

In this paper we present Thawing Colours, a tactile, visual and sonic installation, which uses suspended spheres of melting ice to paint on surfaces, woollen strings to provide a means of interaction, and concatenative synthesis–the stitching together of many small fragments of sound–to provide a digitally mediated response to motion and vibration by resynthesizing the input sound using a corpus of pre-prepared sounds. In one sense, it is an evolving, site-specific physical installation, a painter or designer that produces images over the course of several days. With some intellectual license, it can be taken as a naturalistic interface for querying a database of sounds, or as a particularly large and unwieldy musical instrument. It is literally a fuzzy interface, with boundaries extending out through the fibres of the woollen strands used to attach coloured balls of ice, and through the supporting cables into the foundations of the building, and through the fingers, palms, and bodies of the participants. We argue that there is a niche for interfaces that are whimsical, ludic and exploratory, and that as part of exploring this niche, we can take an ecosystemic view on interfaces: embracing their physical properties, their situation in an environment, and the byproducts and feedbacks therein.

Contributors

Dave Murray-Rust

Rocio von Jungenfeld

Conference

Publication date: September 2012

Publication date (Print): September 2012

Pages: 1-6

Affiliations

GeoSciences

University of Edinburgh

Drummond Street, EH66DD

Edinburgh College of Art

University of Edinburgh

12 Nicholson Square, EH89DF

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/HCI2012.87

Copyright statement: © Dave Murray-Rust et al. Published by BCS Learning and Development Ltd. The 26th BCS Conference on Human Computer Interaction, Birmingham, UK

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: The 26th BCS Conference on Human Computer Interaction

Conference acronym: HCI

Conference number: 26

Conference location: Birmingham, UK

Conference date: 12 - 14 September 2012

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Human Computer Interaction

Product

Product Information: 1477-9358BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/HCI2012.87

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

Categories

Series title: Electronic Workshops in Computing