Flow 5.0 is made up of hundreds of computer fans. The fans are responsive and triggered by motion sensors. As you pass through the tunnel the fans begin to spin and create a gentle flow of air reflecting your presence.
Mirror Mirror is a new commission for the Decode exhibition. As you walk towards the pond, your presence is detected and echoed across the screens positioned within the ellipse of the John Madejski Garden. LED dot matrices relay your image as you walk into the space, creating multiple reflections on the surface of the water. The line between spectator and participant becomes blurred, as the visitor becomes both audience and performer.
Many of the works in Decode respond instantly to the visitor. They give an immediate payoff, recording presence and translating this into movement, sound or an instant reflection of yourself. Venetian Mirror forces you to slow down, rewarding you with a response only when you linger in front of the mirror.
Daniel Rozin’s Weave Mirror captures your image on hundreds of moving components. These parts are made up of C-type prints that change from black to white. Using shades of grey, the moving parts shift until they represent your image. On the reverse the construction of the piece is exposed to reveal the craft and complexity of the work.
Videogrid consists of 25 squares which each record a one-second loop of film. Participants standing in front of the work are free to create moving portraits, simple narratives, group artworks or simply a collage of moving snapshots. The grid starts empty at the beginning of the installation and becomes a constantly changing collaborative artwork.
Body Paint is an interactive installation that allows you to paint on a virtual canvas with your own body. Akten has created a custom software programme that converts your gestures and motion into the malleable paintbox that you see in front of you.
This playful installation allows you to blow away the seeds of a dandelion clock using an infrared light concealed in the hairdryer. It mimics the wind, scattering the seeds until they fall to the grass.
The creatures that appear when sand is gently moved away have been programmed to take on swarm intelligence. Creatures grow and populate the areas of the screen that are not covered in sand. You can control where and when the life forms evolve and grow.
Solar is a sound-responsive work. Using a combination of the open-source computer programming language Processing and beat detection, sounds are picked up via the microphone and translated into a moving animation, the audio waves represented in the glowing orb in the centre of the screen.
3D mapping technology, using a scanner with 64 lasers in place of a video camera, was employed to make the music video House of Cards by Radiohead. The lasers were used to scan and map the contours of the characters in the video. This is an interactive version of the video, featuring Thom Yorke. Touching the screen allows you to control the image, changing the perspective and angles from which you view the video.