Marc Tuters

photo by julian bleecker

Students were given a stock IKEA Akurum wall cabinet, with which we were asked to create an interactive experience to "interact" with one or more of the jurors. We were given a week to conceive of, design and produce the piece.

I built a diorama of three apartments Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window". The audience member picked-up a video camera and peered into the rooms, doing so, triggered audio clips from the film's samples of Jimmy Stewart's character's dialouge on the view into courtyard from his rear window. Output from the camera was displayed on a projection behind the cabinet.

photos by skeckulous

Conceptually, I sought simply to celebrate the film and it's clever mediation on voyeurism and contemporary urban life. In terms of process, I knew immediately what I wanted to do with the assignment. On the first day, Chloe Nil and created a blueprint of the film's diogetic space and settled on our characters. I made sketches and Chloe did the renderings. We went to Michaels and bought material for inspiration, half of which we brought back. I worked on the sculpture on the weekend, and physical computing during work days. Once the technical side was successfully completed, I integrated it with diorama.

Technically it involved building a set from foamcore and balsa wood, embedding with photo sensitive sensors. These ran to an Arduino micro controller, which communicated with Max/MSP .

Download file for video documentation.

Thanks again to Perry for his invaluable help with both Arduino and Max/MSP.