Saam Tehrani
ifhs1.jpg

I Feel Her Stare

I Feel Her Stare

fiberglass, Interactive installation, 3-D Gantry, Kinect, skeleton tracking  

Credits:

Artist: Amin Davaie.

Exhibitions:

TADAEX 2012

The reality of every phenomenon is certainly beyond its appearance. In other words, truth cannot be sighted at first, because truth hides itself behind a deceptive fake reality. This secret -this reality- is not revealed unless trust comes to the picture .Trust is what allows communications to occur and relationships will not deepen if trust starts fading away.

This interactive installation unveils the existence of trust layers and how it influences human relationships. It was exhibited for two weeks at Mohsen Art Gallery, Tehran, Iran. 

Behind the black flexible fabric hides a volumetric sculpture of Amin’s head. As a viewer walks in front of the installation, the sculpture creates an ephemeral relationship with its viewer. It does so by revealing his consciousness and existence to the viewer merely by sliding the tip of his nose against the fabric. The sculpture follows the viewer everywhere he/she goes and it'll get closer as it spends more time with that viewer. The persistence and depth of this relationship is up to the viewers' actions. The more graceful and playful the viewer is, the more the sculpture reveals himself. On the other hand, if the viewer rushes into this interaction/relationship, the sculpture will end the established connection and hides back behind the black wall and doesn't come out for a while!

Technology

The sculpture is mounted on a 3-dimensional gantry actuation system. This will let the sculpture move freely in the space behind and beyond the fabric. On the side-wall, there is a Kinect sensor which is constantly tracking the viewers in the scene. As soon as a viewer is within the appropriate distance, the sculpture starts the interaction. There are numerous states and conditions that define the flow of this interaction. User speed, time, distance, user's height, and sex are among the factors. The system was entirely developed in C++. I used Kinect's Windows SDK to track the users. Given the skeleton data from Kinect sensor,I passed them under coordination system transformation in order to map the point view of the Kinect to the point of the view of the sculpture. I used Fastech Plus-R Ezi Servo system for all three axes.