if the forest wanders
if the forest wanders is an interactive projection mapping of the underside of a train bridge, that uses hand-drawn imagery of bioluminescent sea creatures and fungi, for Brisbane City Council’s Friday Night Laneways Organic Data festival. This festival sat in conjunction with the World Science Festival.
The work revolves around the central theme of the train tracks, from which an ‘xray view’ of the tracks above was made. A wandering forest of bioluminescence grew up over these tracks, and each time a train came through, they would be blown away, only to regrow with time.
The work was interactive in a number of ways. The audience can control a steam train that drives through the tracks, as well as setting off separate animations. As it is a working train bridge, trains often passed overhead, at which point a separate train animation would run in time with the overhead train, meant to look like an xray of what was happening above. A hidden speaker sets off sounds each time the work is interacted with by the audience.
Cryptext and Nomencluster
Art game maker and digital poet Jason Nelson and newly minted games developer Matt Horton have created a new games genre, Giant Touch Screen Games.
Their creations, Cryptext (an interactive puzzle/science fiction mystery game) and Nomencluster (a generative artwork/game created by user’s hand movements using poetry and science designs) were built for one of the world’s largest, most advanced touch screen spaces, located at QUT’s The Cube (four 40ft sides, over 40 touch screens, towering over two stories).
Bioluminous Walking
Bioluminous Walking projection event
Bioluminous Walking is a solo event held within the rainforests of Australia. It's original iteration consisted of six separate projection artworks mapped to the forest itself using hidden technology to both allow visitors to step into the magic, but also to keep the rainforest itself untouched by cumbersome technology. Each artwork augmented the forest by placing in to it an animation of a native animal that would have, at least at one time, been seen in that habitat.
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This project is a part of Alinta Krauth's larger parent project Treemails: Scenic Rim. With thanks to RADF and The Five Senses Festival, for which this project became a part. Also thanks to local newspapers of the area where the event was held, and local ABC radio stations, for picking up on and promoting Bioluminous Walking and the Treemails project.
The Red Zone
Jason Nelson of EphemerLab created four interactive touch-enabled pieces for Griffith University's touchscreen space in The Red Zone.
Each of these dynamic works uses images and texts as forms of .js enabled concrete poetry to delight and inspire audiences who interact with the works.
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A Virtual Bathymetric
A Virtual Bathymetric
'A Virtual Bathymetric' uses frame-by-frame drawing animated in JavaScript to re-create the tracings of local and global shipping trade routes and sea floor topography. By stylising these routes as abstract imagery, the concepts of mapping and documentation are brought into question and re-imagined. Placed into a 3D copper cube of holographic projection screens, the image multiplies and distorts, creating its own faux topography. But this is not your usual room-sized projection mapping onto an object, indeed it is very small. In being so small, it allows the viewer, perhaps even forces, a more intimate connection; a one-on-one interaction with a holographic ocean.
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‘A Virtual Bathymetric’ premiered at Piksel Festival, Norway, 2016. It is a small and self-contained version of the faux-holo idea originally shown at White Night (Nuit Blanche), Melbourne and QUT Art Museum, Brisbane, as ‘Cartology Apology’. It is an experimental projection sculpture. Piksel festival is a festival for sustainable digital art that has been produced through open-source software. The video created and shown through this sculpture traced popular shipping routes, particularly in the North Sea, but also globally. In projecting through the sculpture, the line of light seemed to morph into a topography.
Collisions of Skin and Glass
Undermine
Under-Mine was a solo exhibition by EphemerLab artist Alinta Krauth, of five new digital video works and one new interactive work using a custom-built control system that premiered at Art Laboratory Berlin between February 25th and late April, 2017, in conjunction with CTM Festival and Transmediale Festival Vorspiel.
This exhibition was the culmination of her research into how certain animals are having their sensory systems morphed by climate change. Focusing on examples where habitat destruction was not the major factor, but rising temperatures themselves were the key factor, the creatures chosen were the bat and echolocation, the horse and proprioception, the lizard and chemoreception, and the woodlouse and hygroreception. With some minor emphasis also placed on creatures whose senses and perceptions are altered by climate change due to habitat destruction in particular – the turtle and magnetoreception, the frog and auditory perception, the fish and olfactory senses.
In each case, extensive scientific research and predictive modelling by others was used, from which a series of animations were created that told the stories, and potential futures, of each of these creatures. As part of the exhibition, a research book of approx 200 pages was also put together, allowing visitors to delve into the scientific research behind these artworks.
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Signals
Signals
Following in the footsteps of Bioluminous Walking, Signals projection event was created by EphemerLab artists, and took place over a series of evenings on Mt Fløyen in Bergen, Norway.
One of the artworks at shown is seen in the video to the left. Norwegian natives, folklore sea creatures, and structures that represented the historical use of Mt Fløyen as part of Bergen’s sea port, are projected back into their native habitat. Other EphemerLab works shown included a large-scale cliff projection of literature that was viewable by audiences in the town 300m below.
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Tree:Mails
Tree:Mails: Scenic Rim is an interactive new media artwork displayed via audiences’ at‐home and hand-held devices that plots a series of GPS-tagged trees in the Scenic Rim area on an interactive map.
Though this platform, users can read stories, both true and fictional, about the trees of the Scenic Rim, and ‘contact trees’ directly via the digital contact forms provided. The inbuilt creative AI system allows trees to ‘respond’ to the user via their email address, allowing people to strike up conversations with, and share stories and secrets with nature. This platform is designed to inspire users to connect with their natural environment in new ways, and acts as a positive use of digital social technologies for the environment.
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Cartology Apology
Cartology Apology is a fantasy cartography-in-motion where old and new technologies combine. Inspired by the topographical nature of Australia, it plays with moving frame-by-frame animation and bright colours drawn from topographical data, and experiments with how this might be represented in a 3D holographic environment.
This is a study of landscape, but also a re-imagined mapping, told from the point of view of a non-local, with all the political difficulties that concept brings to light. It is also a documentation of process – since it is frame-by-frame animation, you are watching hundreds of hours of the artist hand-drawing topographic lines.
The audio that you hear in this artwork is a mixture of sounds generated by the walking movement of visitors through the church, whisperings about walking the land, and footsteps recorded across the Australian country-side.
Cartology Apology was debuted at White Night Melbourne 2016 where over 11,000 people were packed inside the beautiful Scot’s Church cathedral to view this disconcerting holographic audio/visual projection display of video art made of animated topographic lines of the greater Victorian area. It was then shown in a different layout at QUT Art Museum. The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age called it one of the ‘gems’ of White Night Festival.
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Poetry Robot
The ability to venture towards, avoid and then circumvent unwanted obstacles, certainly when combined with the delivery of poetic content, might be considered evidence of life, sentient, semi-intelligent life. And yet the whirling motor hum coming from a small circular creature, arms with touch screen hands reaching up from its back, roaming around the room is only a half-life.
The Poetry Robot doesn’t understand or, dare I say, even care about gallery visitors watching/reading the textual wonders it shines up from LCDs. It doesn’t know or feel bonded to its digital poet creator. Its only desire is to move, avoid and feed/recharge.
But still, we wonder. Is the Poetry Robot a lost adventurer? Are the words and images coming from its prayerful hands/screens expressing fear and desire, a frustration with its ability to understand. Or perhaps it is trying to find us, to warn/advise us of a future where life in redefined in binary and servos.
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Shadows Blister those who try to Touch
Shadows blister those who try to touch is generative animation, that in turn generates audio. The thematic basis is derived from a visual and textual representation of, and response to, the ‘shadow blister’ effect in physics.. Using a triangular delaunay effect has been used on all imagery to further connect it to the 3D sculpture wall. The audience uses a purpose-built controller to change the visuals and generate different elements.
Shadows blister those who try to touch is an interactive projection mapping installation that has been seen at ACM MM exhibition and conference 2015, Metro Arts Gallery 2016, Collar Works Gallery 2016, among others.
As well as creating and producing this work, Alinta Krauth published the academic paper Using Handmade Controllers for Interactive Projection Mapping.
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Tilty Table
The Tech Museum in San Jose, California ran a contest for Exhibitions conceived in Second Life, with the winning interactive artworks being fabricated and included in the Exhibition. EphemerLab artist Jason Nelson won for an interactive Table that functioned as a mouse and allowed users to move the artwork by moving the table through a series of servos and a projector.
The artwork itself was a combination of poetic content inspired by the history of the Silicone Valley and a rethinking of the roles of numerous "turning point" technologies such as the mouse and the first portable PCs. The artwork was praised by both the inventor of the mouse and Moore of Moore's law who were at the opening.
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The purpose of this installation was to find new ways of activating public spaces through digital art, and to use the idea of a library as a space for public reading and learning in the artwork itself to create an animated digital story. The other purpose of Bindings was to use old, unused, or recycled technologies and materials. In this case, all equipment and materials used were recycled and restored to OHandS standards by EphemerLab. As many of these technologies were found within the library already (stacked away in storage, for instance), this showed the potential for any library to have its own activated digital space with minimal budget required.
Nothing you have done deserves such praise
Video games are a language, a grammar or linguistics of various texts. The sounds, the movement, the graphics, the rules or lack of rules, everything about a video game is a component of language. A digital poetry game must combine all these elements, strange and interactive stanzas, crossed out and obstructed lines, sounds and texts triggered and lost during the play. Indeed the game interface becomes a road to inhabiting the digital poem, to coaxing the reader/player into living and creating within the game/poetry space.
Nothing You Have Done Deserves Such Praise is an art/ poetry/ adventuring game, a playland for exploring our ever-present desire for constant and over-blown rewards. Our worlds (digital and breathing) are filled with needless and unearned praise, we are built to love exploding trophies for fifth place. This art/poetry game satisfies your compliment addiction by celebrating your walking/ jumping/ falling through strange and wondrous anatomical lands.
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the fingers of a warm and careful andriod 2
A touchable, holographic, moving display created specifically for an Australian library space.
The 'pepper's ghost' type display allows for a D object to be placed inside the box, giving not just the sense of a touchscreen space, but an augmented mixed-reality layering effect. This visual artwork is themed around fictional monstrous hybrid Australian animals that respond to touch and 3D objects. It's imagery and title is taken from Alinta Krath's earlier work for library spaces.
Notes on the original fingers of a warm and careful android barcode scanner edition:
This world first interactive art installation works for books, DVDs, audio books, and any other Gold Coast City Libraries item. Take your library item and scan the barcode to have it tell you about the places it has been and the interesting and quirky people it has been lent to in the past.Scanning your library book's barcode brings up a story and animation on the large screen that is
unique to your book.
The concept behind the piece is that all library books/items have stories from their past that we cannot tap
into, and this project allows people to (fictionally) hear about the past adventures of their favourite books.
The unique idea behind this artwork can be transported to other libraries around the world. It also works for other types
of collections, such as museum collections. If your library or museum institution would like an interactive story box like
this, either for on-site or for web, contact us.
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what we do
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? / }large-scale installations and mixed-reality experiences
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large-scale installations and mixed-reality experiences
Each of our works experiment with the use of disruptive technologies, and the disruption of technologies, in order to create bespoke artworks driven by originality. Whether it is a new combination or hardwares, softwares, or media, there is always something about our works that has never been attempted before, to our knowledge, in the digital arts.
We create small and large-scale interactive works, from events such as Bioluminous Walking and Signals that champion small-scale projection interaction, to large site takeovers such as Cartology Apology or Wind Blisters those who try to Run (see image).
Many of these works are made for outdoor interaction, running at large festivals or as their own public events. They are particularly site-specific, and often the history of the place or object is told through the artwork as an interactive narrative. Our works aim to augment public spaces for the enjoyment of audiences of all ages.
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? / }screens and touchscreens
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screens and touchscreens
Drawing on our history as netartists, EphemerLab creates many interactive screen-based artworks and apps. Made dynamically for a range of media sizes, our works engage in storytelling, visual poetics, narrative, and gameplay. From the southern hemisphere's largest touchscreen displays, to online apps with global reach through the smallest of phones, we have made works for all platforms.
Non-interactive screen-based work, or more traditional video art, is an emerging and exciting area of our practice, with video art and data-driven animations being installed for perminent display in libraries, in our solo exhibitions, and at ephemeral projection festivals and events.
Our works of this nature have been reviewed in the likes of The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, the ABC News, The Creators Project, Vice, among others.
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% @ *the poetic and the narrative
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the poetic and the narrative
Many of EphemerLab's works engage with the notion of using interactive interfaces as portals for poetic play and narrative storytelling, informed by both Jason and Alinta's histories as published creative writers. The fields often associated with this are digital poetry, electronic literature, and forms of story apps and digital story games.
Drawing on these fields, many of EphemerLab's works for screen or augmented display allow the audience to read, or indeed be a part of the creation of, poetry, fiction, or creative non-fiction. Ranging from internet-enabled pieces that can be accessed by anyone with an internet connection, to site-specific works often commissioned for libraries and other knowledge institutions, these dynamic text-based artworks help to redefine the concept of the book for the digital age.
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# ! ^workshops and lectures
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workshops and lectures
Both Alinta Krauth and Jason Nelson have many years experience in running public workshops in digital art, interaction design, physical computing, and digital literacy and writing skills. Both have travelled extensively internationally to give public and institution-based artist's talks, lectures, and workshops. They also have a combined 27 years experience in tertiary level lecturing and running lab/tutorial classes.
EphemerLab
We are a creative group of digital artists, interaction designers, academics, theorists, interactive writers, art-game makers, and scientific and technological explorers. We build/birth interactive and bespoke artworks for unconventional spaces and varied circumstances. Our works seek to foster community engagement, placemaking, narrative curiosity and space activation. And our intention is always to rethink the use of current and future digital technologies for artistic purposes.
Our philosophy: We believe in a middle-ground between conceptual art and the 'spectacle of the new'; we make works that are both thought provoking and visually stunning (and sometimes compellingly strange). We are interested in the interactions between place and the digital, whether it be urban or rural, and are driven by themes of sustainability, the climate, the environment and its creatures. And at the heart of all our creations are stories and poetics. After all, it is storytelling which brings our curious creations to life, and poetics which give them mysterious wonder.
And above all else, we play, we break, we make.
the founders
artist
jason nelson
Coming from Australia, Jason Nelson is a creator of curious and wondrous digital poems and fictions of odd lives, builder of confounding art games and all manner of curious digital creatures.
He professes Net Art and Electronic Literature at Australia's Griffith University in subtropical metropolis of Brisbane. Aside from coaxing his students into breaking, playing and morphing their creativity with all manner of technologies, he exhibits widely in galleries and journals, with work featured around the globe at FILE, ACM, LEA, ISEA, SIGGRAPH, ELO and dozens of other acronyms.
There are awards to list (Paris Biennale Media Poetry Prize), organizational boards he frequents (Australia Council Literature Board and the Electronic Literature Organization), and numerous other accolades (Webby Award), but in the web based realm where his work resides, Jason is most proud of the millions of visitors his artwork/digital poetry portal http://www.secrettechnology.com attracts each year.
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artist
alinta krauth
Alinta Krauth is a new media artist and interaction designer. Her practices include projection art, interactive art, sound art, and electronic literature, and the inherent connections between these fields.
She is interested in how digital art may be applied to highlight environmental destruction, particularly with regards to climate change. Her literary, creative, and hybrid works have been exhibited and published globally. Most notably: her research and practice on interactive controllers for projection-mapped objects and faux-holographic sculptures, interactive screen-based public experiences, how climate change effects the senses, bushwalking as proprioceptive act, and the connection between gravity and proprioception in music listening.
Recent exhibitions outside of Recraction Factory include ISEA Vancouver, Piksel Norway, and Transmediale Berlin. Recent solo shows have been seen in Art Laboratory Berlin and within the forests of Australia and Norway.
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