Year: 2024
Medium: Realtime/Interactive Installation, Sculpture, Video Art, Robotic Performance
Venue: RAD Lab | Kent State University
Year: 2024
Medium: Realtime/Interactive Installation, Sculpture, Video Art, Robotic Performance
Venue: RAD Lab | Kent State University
Micro-Habitat δ
Year: 2022
Medium | Category: Realtime Immersive Installation, Virtual Reality (VR), Sculpture, Video Art, Robotic Performance, Digital Art, Web Design
Venue: RAD Lab | Kent State University
Brief Description:
Micro-Habitat δ aims to revisit human/nature relationship with a focus on the issue of “scale” and through the lens of immersive and interactive technologies as potential experiential mediums.
Shifting scale from micro to macro has always produced creative friction in many art forms and mediums. Micro-Habitat δ tries to question the possibility of these scale shifts—in this case, scaling down to micro-scale—as real-time immersive spatial/experiential mediums.
Using a combination of a physical object-like mini-garden, real-time robotics, 360-degree videography, web-based interactions, and Virtual reality (VR) software/hardware platforms, Micro-Habitat is a curated immersive experience where its audience can scale down to the micro-scale of a bug, and walk into a wonderland of a physical flower garden.
Shifting scale cyber-physically, the audience will experience the garden as a city, flowers as spatial pockets and buildings, and plants as infrastructure. The audience can freely walk and look around and enjoy their new scale!
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Micro-Habitat δ was longlisted for the 2022 Dezeen Design Award.
Multi-scale Multi-Medium Immersion:
Micro-Habitat δ exhibition/installation proposes a real-time cyber-physical immersive—in different scales and forms—experience, enabling its audience to shift scale and their visuospatial/experiential perceptions.
The exhibition/installation is made of three primary experiences:
1- I’m a Bug!: Experiencing the object-like mini garden—the centerpiece—through the lens of a bug. Using 360-Livestream videography, combined with real-time robotic motion—small robot—Micro-Habitat δ’s audience can experience the garden through the lens of a “bug” and move around freely, using their cellphones, Micro-Habitat δ website, or a VR headset, and all Live/in real-time.
2- I’m a Butterfly Human!: Using the camera mounted on and animated by UR10 industrial robot arm—in real-time—the audience can engage Micro-Habitat δ at the scale of a flying human—or a spirit—through a curated camera path, providing a specific flying tour of Micro-Habitat δ.
3- I’m a Human! (the voyeur): There is always an eye—a camera— watching the setup from a specific view. Whether it’s the first day of the exhibition or the last, or it’s a sunny day or a night, “the voyeur” watches Micro-Habitat δ.
+ Micro-Habitat was designed and developed as a platform more than anything else. It is meant to be explored/discovered/experienced at various scales/visuospatial scenarios ranging from a bug experience to a flying—“butterfly”—human or a voyeur.
However, during its physical exhibition, it engaged myself—and some other visitors—unexpectedly; as a living room to hang out, take photos, chat, and relax, or as a cyber-physical garden for musical improvisations.
Note:
The project is made possible through the kind and generous financial/equipment support and grants by:
The Knight Foundation, Kent State University | CAED, Studio EP, Robotically Augmented Design (RAD) Lab.
The project—design, fabrication, digital/software development, etc.— and its media package—logotype, poster, VR experience, videos, etc.—have been done individually by Ebrahim Poustinchi.
* Carl Barrett, my Kent State undergraduate student, was my assistant in the preparation of the physical setup.
© 2024 Designed by Ebrahim Poustinchi (Studio EP L.L.C.). All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all materials on these pages are copyrighted.