SUBTITLEInterface for Research of Opportunity and Determination. A room of 84 laser beams that reads the body and answers in sound.
2019
RELEASE
MEDIUM
Interactive audiovisual installation comprising 84 laser beams, motion sensors, custom electronics and a user-configurable library of 84 sound samples.
SHOWN
An open interface rather than a fixed sound composition: musicians and performers can upload their own set of 84 samples, and those soundscapes may remain in the work’s library.
LOCATED
Almaty, Kazakhstan
STATE
EXISTS
PROTOTYPE
2016
RECORD
PS/PROJECT/IFROD/V01
REGISTER
OPENCORESOURCEDRY
NOT IN THE RECORD
DIMENSIONS · COLOUR
IfRO&D
01Experience
Affective experience.
“IfRO&D” (Interface for Research of Opportunity and Determination) is an interactive installation functioning as a kind of “inducer of affective experience”. Entering a dark space, the viewer finds themselves in front of a red beam — a “dopamine trigger”, as enticing as a red button. Activating the installation locks the participant in the center of a glass room-cage woven from 84 laser beams. As they start moving, they touch the light strings, generating sound, which in turn affects their further movements. Thus, a feedback loop is established, in which the person and the sound environment mutually determine each other.
P09 / FIRST THRESHOLDVIEW ↗
02Feedback
Mutual determination.
Through this dynamics of feedback, “IfRO&D” manifests the fundamental relationality of human existence. Just as the rhythms of everyday life structure our actions, and our actions maintain or transform these rhythms, the participant’s dance and the dynamics of the audial landscape are in a state of continuous inter-modulation. The installation becomes a testing ground for exploring this complex network of connections, allowing everyone to sense the unique configuration of forces and influences, to map their own chart of relationships.
FIG. 01 / RECIPROCAL FIELDSELECT A POSITION
↓ GENERATES SOUND EVENTS↑ CHANGED SOUND → NEXT MOVEMENT
↓ COLOURS THE WHOLE STREAM
01 PARTICIPANTInside the installation, the performer interrupts light through movement and creates sound events. The altered stream shapes their next movement.
PERFORMER: MOVEMENT → LIGHT INTERRUPTION → SOUND EVENT OTHER VIEWERS: COLOUR WHOLE STREAM → ALTERED SOUND → NEXT MOVEMENT
An important dimension of the work is the social aspect. The audio stream generated by the participant’s movements inside the sensory room is fed to an external console, from where it can be modified by other viewers. This possibility of external influence refers to hyperobjects — phenomena of a planetary scale like global warming or a pandemic, whose total presence colors the entire landscape of our lives.
P05 / EXTERNAL CONSOLEVIEW ↗
03Sound library
An interface, not a fixed composition.
At the technical level, the soundscape is implemented through samples tied to motion sensors. But this technological basis opens up the possibility of wide participation. Anyone can create their own sound palette, tell the story of their life, share an experience — and thereby not only live the experience of a demiurge but also let others into the intimate space of their world. The installation becomes a point of assembly for many worlds, resonating with and enriching each other.
84 POSITIONS / ONE REPLACEABLE LIBRARYTOP → BOTTOM / LEFT → RIGHT
POSITION 01 / 84NO AUDIO SUPPLIED · INDEX STUDY
An open interface rather than a fixed sound composition: musicians and performers can upload their own set of 84 samples, and those soundscapes may remain in the work’s library.
A room of 84 beams makes movement legible to the sound system. These diagrams describe the relationships and the documented glass-panel geometry; inferred parts are marked as such, not offered as fabrication plans.
BODY→LIGHT INTERRUPTION→MOTION SENSOR→SOUND→NEXT MOVEMENT
FIG. A / Functional system: light, sensors, controller and soundNOT TO SCALE
The light interruption becomes an input; the sound becomes a condition for the next movement. Functional relationships, not a wiring diagram.
FIG. B / Spatial reconstruction of the panel planesNOT TO SCALE
The solid outlines represent glass. The dashed outlines indicate an inferred frame. Opposing-side separation and support profiles are not specified.
3 × 2 GLASS PANELS5444 × 2180.5 MM · GLASS-ONLY ENVELOPE400 × 396 MM · GRID PITCHArithmetic reconstruction from source dimension chains. Seams, frame and opposing-side distance are not specified.
FIG. C / Glass schedule: six panels and primary hole layoutNOT TO SCALE
Six panels, arranged 3 × 2. A 14 × 6 primary hole grid and one additional bore are shown in the source. The additional bore is not assigned a function.
FIG. D / Laser mount: assembled axonometric viewNOT TO SCALE
Assembled laser mount, redrawn from the supplied reference. Two clamp plates hold the laser module on a larger mounting triangle. Spring-loaded fasteners connect the mount to the glass panel; tilting the mount adjusts the laser alignment.P10 / MOUNT / CONSTRUCTION DETAILVIEW ↗
FIG. E / Functional redraw of the custom sensor boardNOT TO SCALE
Terminal strips, divider / multiplexer groups and a controller connection replace the source screenshot’s visual clutter. Electrical routing and board channel capacity are not inferred.
Ultimately, “IfRO&D” unfolds as an ecosystem of interacting actors and forces — the human generating a soundscape by means of their body; the environment guiding the human’s movements; external influences modulating this environment. It is an embodied metaphor for human existence — in its constant oscillation between autonomy and heteronomy, freedom and conditionality.
Immersed in the interactive environment, the viewer doesn’t just read these ideas but lives them, incorporates them into their bodily and affective experience. Through a series of micro-shifts in habitual patterns of orientation, the installation induces an experience that resonates with key philosophical intuitions — the idea of necessary effort, the understanding of the ethical as an immanent plane of composition of forces.
the human generating a soundscape by means of their body
P04 / THE SHARED FIELDVIEW ↗
06Documentation
Views / records.
COMPRESSED LINE / SOURCE DOCUMENTATION13 IMAGES · SELECT TO VIEW
LONG VIDEO / PROVIDED LINK · PLAYBACK ON REQUEST OPEN SOURCE ↗SHORT VIDEO / PROVIDED LINK · PLAYBACK ON REQUEST OPEN SOURCE ↗
07Afterstate
A different way of co-existing.
In this sense, “IfRO&D” becomes a machine for transforming perception and self-perception. It opens up the possibility of a new — more plastic, responsive, contingent — way of co-existing with the world and others. And thereby it endows the viewer with agency in constructing their own life despite any external determinations.
Ultimately, through the production of affective experience, the installation doesn’t just represent certain conceptual models but actively intervenes in the processes of constituting subjectivity. It becomes a catalyst for micro-political shifts, a machine of ontological transformation that changes the very parameters of our being-in-the-world.
BODYFIELDOTHER↺
CREDITS
ARTIST & CONCEPT
Pavel Seldemirov
INTERACTION DESIGN, SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE & CREATIVE CODING
