Turnstile
Ursula Damm (DE)
Interactive Art+
HONORARY MENTION ARS ELECTRONICA
Installation
Turnstile is a digital artwork in public space that investigates swarm behavior as an expression of collective daily life.
In a version specially adapted for the CyberArts show, passers-by on OK Square are filmed and their images transmitted to customized generative software. The software follows a particular grammar to translate the interplay of local events, pedestrian activity, and social interaction into virtual geometric architecture. These readings of the real-time video stream generate new geometries for the setting, suggesting new axes and spatial divisions.
The original Turnstile is a permanent installation that was set up in 2016 in the Schadowstraße subway station in Düsseldorf, Germany.
PROGRAM
- Select a location (origin).
- Determine the movement axes of people and traffic.
- Look to see if these axes are at angles to one another, which when mirrored and rotated can form a polygon, the sides of which all extend outward equally.
- Draw this polygon to approximate the natural geometry of the location.
- Look to see if, starting from this, the intrinsic geometries of the location can form a surface structure (tessellation) that periodically repeats the original geometries.
- Determine whether and how, in the aerial image of the location, the areas fit together in the revealed geometry of the place.
- Enhance existing structures by developing their geometries.
- Connect existing structures into the logic of the original geometry.
- See if, based on these geometries, which are local to the site, a surface structure (tiling) is possible which rhythmically repeats the original geometries.
- Investigate if and how existing areas in the aerial view of the place fit into the found geometry of the place.