Currents: Santa Fe International New Media Festival

Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art

W3FI install time-lapse

W3FI launched June 2011 during the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art exhibition "BIODOME: An Experiment in Diversity."

EXHIBITION DATES: June 23 - September 11, 2011
OPENING RECEPTION: June 23, 6:30PM - 10:00PM
LOCATION: Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art www.bmoca.org
PARTICIPANTS: Everyone with an online presence!
ASSOCIATED EVENTS: Artist Lecture, July 14, 2011, 7pm at BMoCA.
SPONSORS: Funding provided in part by the Creative Arts Materials Funds and Faculty Research Funds at the University of Denver. Additional support provided by Paladin Tech Works, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art and Skyhook.
SPECIAL THANKS TO:
Michael Salter michaelasalter.com
Justin Novak justinnovak.com
Chris Nelson chrisnelsonfineart.com
Kristin Mallinger kasart.net
Francisco "Kiko" Marra
Darwin Grosse darwingrosse.com
Andrew Edwards aelijahe.com
Susan Meyer susanmeyerinstallation.com

Walkthru

The exhibition is a space for discussion, learning and consideration.

On the walls you will can read an explanation of the W3FI philosophy lain out in a series of text and symbols moving from the S3LF wall, to the W3 wall and finally to the W3FI wall.

The walls also feature statistics about national and international use of the internet, mobile phones, and social networks. On the S3LF and W3 walls you will also see live tweets from area residents who use the word "I" or "we."

The right half of the W3FI wall is a space for people to add themselves to the W3FI network by having their face captured and added to an ever-growing forest of interconnected trees.

On the Boulder topographic table visitors can watch 3 sets of information about connectivity in the region. One is a display of all the registered cell towers in the region. Another is a display of each of nearly 10,000 discovered wifi routers in the region. These are largely discovered by people driving around town with their phone set to collect such information and so many of the major streets become visible during this phase. The third set of information is the amount of mobile data use over an average week. It was donated by Skyhook, a company who provides mapping information to mobile phone application makers such as Yelp. If you are looking at the W3FI wall, the North end of the topology is to the right.

The W3FI seats are there for visitors to relax, read, and discuss the ideas of the exhibition. The light patterns are modeled after the flocking of birds and fish and will evolve over time, much like our personal social networks.

Motion activated sound modules spread throughout the space play the sounds of cell phones receiving notices of communication: texts, likes, tweets and the digital noise passing through all of us at every moment.

Technology

Walls: Vinyl designed in vector-based software. Projectors driven by Mac Pro running Quartz Composer and Vade Video Player plug-in. Animations created in Adobe AfterEffects.

W3FI Tree: Projector driven by Mac Mini. Program created with Processing using OpenCV facial recognition, facial tracking by Daniel Shiffman, and the Traer Physics Library.

Boulder Data Table: Topo model created with Blender using accurate GIS data. CNC'ed out of blue insulation foam using a DIY CNC machine. Projector driven by WD TV player. Data visualizations created with Processing using data from Wigle.net and Skyhook Wireless.

W3FI Seats: The seats are PolyCorbonate with LED arrays inside. They are driven by a DMX lighting controller which is controlled by an Arduino. The program is a Boid flocking simulation adapted for the Arduino with the help of Darwin Grosse of Cycling '74.

Sound Players: Each of the 4 motion activated sound players are made up of small powered speakers, an Arduino, a Sparkfun MP3 Sheild, and an Adafruit motion sensor.