Kinetica Artfair

Kitchen Budapest

Kitchen Budapest is a new media lab for young researchers who are interested in the convergence of mobile communication, online communities and urban space and are passionate about creating experimental projects in cross-disciplinary teams.

Kitchen Budapest presents two projects especially made for Kinetica Art Fair 2010.

LANdelion

Participants: Eszter Bircsak, Judit Boros, Laszlo Kiss, Zsolt Korai, Manuela Lukacs, Melinda Sipos, Andrea Sztojanovits

LANdelion is an interactive sculpture made from recycled materials. A new kind of flora has appeared in the satellite system as the result of the pervasive existence and extension of the internet: the net-flower. LANdelion represents our imagination of this new phenomena.

We took the dandelion's form and attributes as principal inspiration for building the prototype. Beside choosing an organic structure it was also important for us to use recycled electronic and mechanic elements to realize the installation. Playing with ambivalent properties like fragile/stable, organic/industrial, playful/serious we aim to underline the ambiguous nature of our shifting on-line information society.

The one diameter sculpture is gently vibrating and glowing by default. When a visitor approaches the vibration and the lighting changes. Blowing toward the LANdelion a lightwave flows through on its surface backed up by quadrophonic sound.

POP

Participants: Krisztian Gergely, Andras Marton Juhasz, Eduard Sik

[POP] or "Power of Play" is a self-reacting installation where custom built robotized desk lamps are playing with a ball. Every movement of each robot and also the game itself is to be learned through evolutional algorithms. This is a physical visualization of natural learning processes shown by anthropomorphic devices.

Playing takes such a big role in peoples life... " At the beach, we are all children. As we gambol in the shallow surf and toss in the deeper waves, we feel the freedom of helplessness and the satisfaction of improvising defenses. Unburdened by consciousness or self-consciousness, we are caught in the moment. Suffused with pleasure, we exult in the sheer lightness of being." - Psychology Today

There is a camera on the ceiling tracking a beach-ball connected to the same computer as the robot lamps. An evolution algorithm based software is trying to find out what to do. The goal of the software is to keep the ball in a dynamic movement.