firewall media installation by aaron sherwood + mike allison

‘firewall’ media installation by aaron sherwood + mike allison

developed by new york-based media artist aaron sherwood, ‘firewall’ stems from a performance piece being developed as purring tiger (with kiori kawai) titled ‘mizalu’, which will premiere in june 2013. during one scene in the performance dancers will press into the spandex with the audience facing the opposite side. ‘mizalu’ is about death and experience of reality, so this membrane represents a plane that you can experience but never get through. as hard as you try to understand what’s in between life and death, you can never fully know.

made using processing, max/MSP, arduino and a kinect, the piece measures the average depth of the spandex from the frame it’s mounted on. if the material is not being pressed against, nothing happens. when someone presses the panel, visuals react around where the person applies pressure, and the music is triggered. an algorithm created with max allows the music to speed up and slow down and get louder and softer, based on the depth. this provides a very expressive musical playing experience, even for people who have never played music before. a switch is built into the frame which toggles between two modes. the second mode is a little more aggressive than the first.

firewall demonstration 

firewall user testing

designboom has received this project from our ‘DIY submissions‘ feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.