VISP—ENGINE
Interactive Installation with sensors, hoses, screen2022
Exhibition view at Drogerie Braunschweig︎︎︎.
photos by Johanna Spieker
“VisP-Engine” - short for “Visual Poetry Engine” - is a digital semi-brain programmed in TouchDesigner and C++ for Arduino.
While the name refers to the ever lasting approximation to the indescribable through the language of imagery, it also links to the disembodied mythical figure of the same name, Wisp or will-o'-the-wisp, known from English folklore and video games. VisP uses a broad array of sensors, monitoring and analyzing its enviroment and interactions with viewers to simulate feelings, which it then communicates via an everchanging generative collage of imagery taken from the archive of the collective.
While VisP itself is capable to remember past states and thus gets influenced in its mood, viewers can feed their own images into the archive to enhance its expressiveness and grow the memory of the system. Being responsive towards environmental factors such as light level and temperature/humidity, VisP is as well receptive towards the presence and interaction of humans, by movement, touch and speech, entering and leaving.
Meeting VisP therefore exposes the audience to a set of social rules that have to be experienced and understood. Its poetic language needs to be read and interpreted and one's own actions matter towards the simulation of feelings, now and in the future.
It's totally up to the participant to anger, hurt or sadden VisP, to make it happy and spark joy or to just bore it. Getting in touch with it raises questions about our relationship with social technology in a local setting, allowing the audience to form a pseudo-social relation between human and machine, to communicate and be communicated to and to wonder about a form of practicable techno-empathy.
You can submit your own photos for further development of VisP–Engine to following adress: visp@unit404.net︎︎︎
DEUTSCH
Werden Sie zum Reiz. Die „Visual Poetry Engine“ nimmt den Raum, in dem sie sichbefindet, und Ihre Anwesenheit wahr. Mit diversen Sensoren beeinflusst das Geschehen innerhalb der Drogerie die Wahl und Kombination der Bilder aus den Archiven des Kollektivs.
Ohne Sie wäre die VisP–Engine einsam. Erkunden Sie einen Ort der Mensch-Maschinen-Interaktion, künstlicher und simulierter Intelligenz, echten und falschen Träumen.
Unter folgender E-Mailaddresse können Sie Ihre eigenen Bilder zur Weiterenticklung der VisP–Engine einreichen: visp@unit404.net︎︎︎