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Prix

The Prix Ars Electronica Archive is a collection enabling search and viewing of all the submissions since 1987. The award-winning projects are documented with catalogue texts and audio-visual media. All other submissions can be searched by title/artist and displayed with year, category in list form. Please cite the credits (artwork name, artist and photographer) and only use the materials if your article is related to Ars Electronica. 

Interactive Art Anerkennung - Honorary Mention 1993

7 objects meet

Akke Wagenaar
'7 objects meet' is an interactive installation in real-time. The graphic output of a real-time program is projected onto a screen by a video projector. The viewer can influence the program and trigger sounds by standing on three pressure plates in front of the screen. In the virtual world of the program seven objects move in accordance with the laws of physics (gravity, elasticity, collision reactions). The virtual camera is always attached to one of the objects and therefore delivers a subjective point of view. When the physical parameters of the objects (elasticity, direction and force of gravity, etc.) are changed, the objects simulate certain behavior patterns. Out of the millions of possible combinations of parameters, eleven were selected that led clearly to groups of behavior patterns. From a standpoint at one of the three pressure plates, the viewer triggers changes in behavior patterns. The program perceives him as one of the objects, connects him with the virtual camera and includes him in its calculations. Starting from the previous positions of the objects relative to each other, the intervention of the viewer gives the objects many different kinds of behavior patterns. This work is an instrument on which the viewer/player can play his own audio-visual games.


Technical Background

HW: SGI
SW: Artist’s Proprietary
Akke Wagenaar, born in 1958 in the Netherlands. Akke Wagenaar studied audiovisual arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, at the Cooper Union Art School in New York, USA, and logic at the University of Amsterdam. In 1990 she moved to Germany to work and teach at the Institut für Neue Medien (institute for new media) in Frankfurt/Main. She is currently a fellow at the Kunsthochschule für Medien (media arts college) in Cologne. She has been working with computers since 1987. From 1990 she has worked intensively in the field of interactive, 3-dimensional computer art, writing her own software. She exhibited her work at several festivals in Europe. She won several grants and awards.