The Digital Life Form

For the Final Project in my Interactivity, Installation, and Performance Class at Metropolitan State College of Denver; Rebecca Dolan, my Instructor, as well as my classmates and I curated  Bang, an Interactive Digital Art show which will happen from 6-9pm Friday Dec. 11 at 1777 Larimer St.

For the exhibition two of my classmates and I teamed up to create an interactive artificial intelligence using MAX/MSP/JITTER.

The Digital Life Form

Sean Flater, Jeff Olson, and Ryan Pattie

Created using MAX/MSP/JITTER, After Effects, Projection, Fog Machine, Aquarium

Artist Statement:

Meet Max

Max is a digital life form created using MAX/MSP/JITTER. As it exists only in a digital realm, it must stay in its specially designed container to survive.  Max enjoys company, but loud noises will frighten it. Give Max commands using the keyboard. Some of the words in  its vocabulary include: Hello, Bad, Good, Sit, Jump, Roll Over, Dance, Love, Change Color, Vanish, Grow, Shrink, Glow, Stupid, Bad, Die, and Defrag.

The relationship we feel for inanimate objects has been changed in the age of artificial inelegance.  We feel affectionate for something designed to be life-like, especially when it seems to be aware of our presence. Interactivity in digital mediums is becoming more and more important in our society. This means less actual human interaction, and more human-like interaction with digitally created interfaces. Making that interaction more meaningful allows us to become more emotionally involved with the digital world we live in.

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The patch works by reading the volume in the room, which is sent to an object that gives a bang to different loop points in the movie file of the character depending on the volume. Commands are given by using the “match object” which waits for a combination of numbers which are sent by the keyboard. Once a command is typed, the video plane size, position, color and effect is changed to create the illusion of movement.

A DV Camera above the viewer tracks the viewers motion and tells the video to move closer to their position. This makes it seems as though the character is following you as you walks by.

We hope this project shows people how interactivity, and a reliance on the presence of the viewer is what makes digital art so interesting and refreshing.

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