PARENTHETICAL WINDOWS
ISSC 2016 The Logics of Image: Visualisation, Iconicity, Imagination and Human Creativity 25-30 July Santorini Greece
The Parenthetical Window: Performing in a full Multimodal Artificial Environment adapted to the Circadian Rhythm
Esthir Lemi, George Triantafyllidis
Lighting Department Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark
Parenthetical Windows is an installation that proposes a lighting design juxtaposed with sound and fragrances and triggered by the users’ selection based on their kinaesthetical perception. In this paper we present the process on creating an artificial environment for only one player on stage (respectively in the room); the research aims to emerge innovative technology, as well as materials that our contemporary civilization offers a comfortable shelter and functions as replica of the real world. To name a few: light for treatment of seasonal effective disorder, fragrances that have been created solely in the lab (and substitute the real ones gradually in the market!), as well as ambiance music samples. A dark corridor/ threshold is constructed between two windows. The one window projects the Mediterranean nature as this is represented in a Haiku of a Greek Nobel price poet of the past century (as a research of embodiment in response to the text) and the other projects a (replicated and re-worked) realistic painting from an emblematic female Finnish artist (completion date 1882).
The research has three milestones, on the one side a replica is tested on how the user affects the three rooms created: 1.nature’s replica (a poem) -2. threshold- (user’s platform) 3.immersion (projection of the painting) and the feedback that the user gets according to their physical condition that demands more light or a lower dim.
The second milestone is to keep the old fashion rhythm in the artificial environment based on what the adaptation reality was before the digital age (represented by the famous painting which represents interior and the poem which represents nature (and interprets-describes the phenomenon of luminescence respectively).
The third milestone is an analysis on the aspects that make artificial adaptation seem more realistic than the natural one in most of the cases.
The on stage platform of the parenthetical windows installation functions as a calibration-balance environment for the users awareness, a minimalistic structure based on a sensitive and delicate lighting design that changes through the pattern of inner need for a constant re-balance on its projection, based on circadian rhythm. The first users are contact improvisation dancers who interact as soloists to the fixed installation. The selection is middle-aged dancers who are not de- pendent on technology neither in their life nor work. The sensors measure heart pulse and trigger the surrounding. Since dancers cultivate the sense of gravity, the rhythm and the perception of the environment as well the aim is to transfer similar knowledge to any amateur user and boost the notion and belief that “all senses are true”. Parenthetical Windows is a transdisciplinary project that researches the aesthetical termini of “augmented” and “replicated” in respect of their artistic projection as well as in matters of medical health.
keywords: circadian rhythm, augmented reality, replica, juxtaposition, immersion, inner rhythm, corporeal cognition