Synchromy is an interactive video installation relying on motion tracking technology to place the spectator at the heart of a creative process: like an interactive Supremacist painting that would react to the quality of motion expressed by spectators, Synchromy adapts its own visual dynamics to the bodily rhythm showed by the audience, who develops in real-time a pictorial work of which they can start to understand the sense and own it by becoming progressively more conscious of their gestures in front of the work, and thus explore new sorts of reaction between motion and image.
The title “Synchromy” refers to a series of abstract paintings so-called ‘Synaesthetic’, realised by Morgan Russell and Stanton MacDonald-Wright between 1911 and 1914 in an attempt to translate the notion of musical tempo in painting. Synchromy is an interactive video installation relying on motion tracking technology as the condition of its time-based existence: without the spectator’s physical presence, Synchromy doesn’t exist; then, as soon as a body enters the stage, it is a composition of forms and colours that appears, like an interactive Supremacist painting that would react to the quality of motion expressed by spectators, by adapting its own visual dynamics to the bodily rhythm showed by the audience. Visual clues, in the form of trails and echoes gradually vanishing, allow for the recognition of rules governing the way the system responds, thus helping the understanding and interaction in preparation for a knowing creation. This pictorial manifestation persists, while metamorphosing itself in front of ambient motion, but slowly fades away after the spectator is gone, before returning to zero again.
Aims:
By means of an invisible motion tracking system, Synchromy intends to explore insinuated relations between the creative potential of the body and its on-screen transcription, by exalting our individual implication as co-creator of a visual artwork: By their simple body movements, spectators are at the heart of a creative process; in real-time, they develop a pictorial work, of which they can start to understand the sense and own it by becoming progressively more conscious of their gestures in front of the work. Body gestures that trigger a system response will heighten our conscience of its kinetic qualities and its role of catalyst for new sorts of reaction between motion and image. Like the way we read tacit gestures of the painter on the canvas, Synchromy pushes the spectator to identify and recognise the process by which the image was constituted, following a chronological sequence and underlying rules, in order to reach “control” of the current artwork of which the spectator is also the author.
Exhibitions / Presentations:
- Sense Detectives, Watermans Art Centre (Brentford, London) – 9 / 23 Jan 2007
- Digital Media studio (Thames Valley University, London) – 23 Jan 2006
- Aterliers Immersions, Ars Numerica (Montbéliard, France) – 21 Nov / 2 Dec 2005