Ars Electronica Archive
Prix
Prix Map
Pictures
Videos
Publications
Special Projects
Women in Media Art
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.
FX Factory - Interactive installation for children
Autorenwerkstatt MEET
Original: FE_2002_fxfactory_001_o.jpg | 1772 * 1005px | 1.7 MB
Original: FX Factory - Bild 3 | 2480 * 3508px | 24.9 MB
Original: FX Factory - Bild 9 | 2480 * 3508px | 8.3 MB
Original: FX Factory - auf | 696 * 564px | 1.5 MB
Original: FX Factory - malen | 701 * 568px | 1.5 MB
Original: FX Factory - verbindungen1 | 698 * 566px | 1.5 MB
The "FX Factory" is an interactive installation structured into scenes for a group of 8 children. The target group are children in the primary school age of six to ten years.
The technical basis is a type of interactive media stage developed in the Animax multimedial theater. The children's place of action is defined by a 8 x 8m surface marked with a white square-shaped dancing area in the center of the darkened theater.
Above the surface, in the middle of the four quadrants, four data projectors with downwards pointing lenses are installed. Close to each projector a downward pointing CCD-camera is attached with an infrared filter as well as a 50 W infrared-flooder. The place of action is vaulted by an arrangement of 40 loudspeakers (audiodome).
By means of the projectors and a modular system based on PCs for the construction of any desired size of big displays for graphic presentations and including video, an 8 x 8 meter floor projection was established. By their positions and movements, e.g. jumping around, the eight children can influence the contents of the floor projection individually, with the whole group or in subgroups. They all wear black baseball caps, the tops of the caps being equipped with infrared-light-reflecting foil.
The interactively controllable graphics and their succession in scenes are to be found in a program module in the control-machine preceding the four presentation omputers. The data of the input media is interpreted here and used to control the graphics, the way graphic events can become a trigger for acoustic events.
An additional projection gives insight into the direction room of the FX Factory, from where from the young inventor WHOOZIT later talks to the children.
The first aim was to analyze the basic function samples and the framework of possible later scenes. With the hand and head equipment for the mathematic visualization of graphic animation and inclusion of the tracking data (their direct visual interpretation), small game situations are created with individual strategies, solution patterns, and dramaturgy.
A project of the Bonn Development Workshop for Computer Media with the intention of establishing the model MEET (Multimedial Theater Education Environments).
The 2001 author's workshop of MEET: Bodo Lensch (production, administration), Doris Vila (artistic administration); David Weinstein (music), Peter Serocka (Virtual sets, graphic animation, tracking), Petr Zubek and Gudrun Teich (Virtual Actors, animation), Cindia Wong (graphic, animation), Aeldrik Pander (Sound, audiodome-programming), Bernd Bleßmann (programming, networks), Birgit Günster (media-educational and theater-educational accompanyment), Robert Solomon (Choreographie accompanyment), Fares Rahmun (acoustics design, audiodome-radio play).