As data networks and the virtual pervade physical spaces, how are we experiencing place?
Can we touch data?
Ruby Corrents 2.0, 2018 Interactive art visualisation.
This augmented, tangible media installation is concerned with our experience of place - as a hybrid of the digital (data) and physically real. It combines live data updates that drive a graphical simulation, with a physical interface comprising fine, white beach sand.
The work has developed from previous work also looking at hybrid digital and physical place through visual expression of light on the water. Here real time computer graphics and a simulation driven by live coastal data inform the Augmenting Reality graphics, projected on the white sand. The use of sand as a tangible interface also pushes this concern in a new direction around the physical materiality of data.
Ruby Corrents 2.0 is the final interactive art work after Ruby Corrents. It comes out of an Artist in Residency at the Coastal Impacts Unit Deagon, a scientific and technical facility for monitoring the coastal waters off Queensland. The competitive Artist in Residence Science Program (AIRS) is run through the Ecosciences Precinct at the Queensland Government's Department of Environment and Science.
Acknowledgements: Coastal Impacts Unit Scientists Paul Boswood, John Ryan, Mitch Whatley; Qld Dept of Environment Science AiRS lead Andy Grodecki, QUT Design Lab, QUT Workshop staff Ian Ashworth and Simon Hewitt. Photography Anthony Hearsey.