Karakuri

An interactive & responsive installation work

Overview

Karakuri is an interactive video installation framed within experimental practice as methodological resource. Karakuri looks at how one can structure a performer's action in an interactive space using domains of embodied knowledge. Specifically it explores a sub domain of interaction where users can use their bodies to interact with virtual physical objects. Karakuri employs an inversion in which the audience becomes a performer to explore how the designed mappings of the space can structure the actions of the interacting performer. In the anticipatory design framework suggested by this inversion the designer becomes a choreographer of possible actions the performer can undertake. The name Karakuri is borrowed from the Japanese for mechanism; it also refers more specifically to the wind-up dolls of the Edo period and intricate wooden boxes with complex opening mechanisms. The name thereby also has connotations to mechanisms that bring the inanimate to life or hidden apparatus that creates what appears to be magic.

Aims

Karakuri has several areas of focus. Firstly it tries to be honest to its origin as an installation artwork in terms of the experiences it affords. Secondly it attempts to discover the underpinnings of a framework for anticipatory design.

Theory

Karakuri attempts to show what an anticipatory design process may look like. One of the initial questions posed by the project regards theory that can support such a design. Three main sources for this theory have been singled out. Two of them let performers understand and act within the space: the concept of affordances (J.J. Gibson) and the user as embodied performer (Marleau-Ponty). The third gives us a tool by which to structuring the event space of the performance over time by looking to narratology (Marie-Laure Ryan).

Methods

The project draws on a synthetic / analytic approach where existing theory is applied in the formulation of the work as a rhetorical statement. Further it is an example of artistic practice as a methodological resource in highlighting specific issues that the researcher wishes to explore. In technical terms the installation uses near infra-red (NIR) and custom written software to extract the silhouette of the performer against a back projection surface and off-the-shelf software for calculating and visualising the user's silhouette and the interaction with physical objects with which the performer can interact.

Analysis

The project has attempted to furnish the space with a set of clear mappings as suggested by both the idea of affordances and the notion from phenomenology of the embodied mind. The representation of the performer in the space is direct and the objects presented to the user clearly insinuate that they will react as physical bodies to interaction, as they indeed do. Further Karakuri looks at narrrativity in the context of interaction by attempting to find a link between the structuring of the attention of the performer through anticipation in embodied interaction with such an installation and the anticipation regulating the expectation and immersion of a reader of linear texts.

Outcomes

Karakuri has produced a working video installation. It has been experienced by experimental testers of the installation, such as media students, fellow digital arts and design researchers, informatics researchers and developers and digital artists. It stands as an example of the anticipatory design prcoess proposed in its design and has generated research in terms on conference papers.

Publications & presentations

Morrison, A. & Skjulstad, S. 2004. ‘Towards embodied interaction’. Designing Design Seminar Series. Electronic arts: Dance and Technology. InterMedia, University of Oslo. 7 December.

Morrison, A. Skjulstad; S. & Smørdal, O. 2004 ‘Choreographing augmented space’. Paper presented at Future Ground Conference 2004, Melbourne Australia, 17-21 November (to appear in refereed proceedings).

Westvang, E. ‘Karakuri: Shadows working on the world’. Invited paper. VSMM 2004 conference, ‘Hybrid realities, Digital Partners’, Ogaki, Japan, November 2004. Proceedings. pp. 1106-1115.