Turnstile

Ursula Damm (DE)

Interactive Art+

HONORARY MENTION

 

Installation

Turnstile is a digital artwork in public space that investigates swarm behavior as an expression of collective daily life.

In a version specially adapted for the CyberArts show, passers-by on OK Square are filmed and their images transmitted to customized generative software. The software follows a particular grammar to translate the interplay of local events, pedestrian activity, and social interaction into virtual geometric architecture. These readings of the real-time video stream generate new geometries for the setting, suggesting new axes and spatial divisions.

The original Turnstile is a permanent installation that was set up in 2016 in the Schadowstraße subway station in Düsseldorf, Germany.

PROGRAM

  1. Select a location (origin).
  2. Determine the movement axes of people and tra­ffic.
  3. Look to see if these axes are at angles to one another, which when mirrored and rotated can form a polygon, the sides of which all extend outward equally.
  4. Draw this polygon to approximate the natural geometry of the location.
  5. Look to see if, starting from this, the intrinsic geometries of the location can form a surface structure (tessellation) that periodically repeats the original geometries.
  6. Determine whether and how, in the aerial image of the location, the areas fit together in the revealed geometry of the place.
  7. Enhance existing structures by developing their geometries.
  8. Connect existing structures into the logic of the original geometry.
  9. See if, based on these geometries, which are local to the site, a surface structure (tiling) is possible which rhythmically repeats the original geometries.
  10. Investigate if and how existing areas in the aerial view of the place fit into the found geometry of the place.

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