WAVGEN / INTERACTIVE INSTALLATIONS WORLD

INTERACTIVE INSTALLATIONS WORLD

sensing · presence · participatory systems

§ 02 / SENSOR TYPES EXPLORER

What Machines Can See

Different sensors reveal radically different data about presence. Toggle the view to understand how each sensing modality shapes what interactions become possible.

Color Camera — Standard RGB imaging. Rich visual detail but sensitive to lighting conditions. Enables face detection, color tracking, and motion detection.

Concepts: gesture recognition via color markers · audience counting · performer spotlight tracking
§ 03 / FEEDBACK LOOP LAB

The Physics of Presence

Interaction is a loop. Input → Processing → Output → Perception. Latency — the delay in that loop — fundamentally changes whether a system feels alive or broken.

LATENCY (ms) 0 ms
JITTER (ms) 0 ms
Move your mouse over the top canvas. The ball follows with the selected delay.
§ 04 / SPACE MEMORY LAB

Spaces That Remember

A floor that records every footstep. Installations can accumulate presence over time — revealing patterns invisible to any single visitor.

DECAY SPEED 8 s
ACCUMULATION MODE
§ 05 / AMBIENT vs EXPLICIT DESIGN

Two Philosophies of Interaction

Explicit design requires deliberate action — you know exactly what to do. Ambient design responds to presence itself, without requiring conscious effort.

EXPLICIT

Clear affordances. Press the button.

AMBIENT

No instruction needed. Presence drives change.

EXPLICITNESS → 0%
Left room: explicit button interaction. Right room: ambient presence response. Watch how the 5 visitors distribute themselves.
§ 06 / FIRST MOVER PROBLEM

The Social Physics of Participation

Interactive installations depend on someone going first. That first interaction licenses everyone else. Designers must engineer the conditions for courage.

AFFORDANCE CLARITY 30%
FIRST RESPONSE INTENSITY 60%
Click the glowing wall to be the first mover. Watch the crowd respond.
§ 07 / PHYSICAL COMPUTING SIMULATOR

Building Sensor Systems

Drag sensor chips to the Arduino board. Define mapping rules. See the output respond in real time.

SENSORS
BTN
POT
DIST
FLEX
TEMP
MIC
OUTPUT
—
No sensor connected
§ 08 / ARTISTS & PRACTITIONERS

Lineage of Interactive Art

teamLab
Japanese Collective · Tokyo
Massive immersive digital environments where visitors become part of living, breathing natural systems. Flowers bloom where you step; fish scatter from your shadow.
Random International
London · Est. 2005
Rain Room (2012) — rain falls everywhere except where you stand. Audience-responsive large-scale installations exploring the boundary between nature and technology.
Memo Akten
Artist / Researcher
Sensor-driven AI and body-tracking works that transform human movement into dynamic visual and sonic landscapes. Studies in machine perception of presence.
Camille Utterback
Embodied Interaction Pioneer
Text Rain (1999, with Romy Achituv) — letters fall from the sky and rest on your silhouette. Foundational work in body-driven generative text systems.
Myron Krueger
Father of Interactive Art · 1974
Videoplace — created in 1974, pioneered the concept of a responsive, artificial reality. Two people in different rooms could interact with shared projected silhouettes.
UVA
United Visual Artists · London
High Contrast, Volume, and large-scale responsive light installations. Known for precise technical craft and conceptually rigorous spatial interventions.
Ryoji Ikeda
Data Artist · Japan / Paris
data.tron — overwhelming precision. Massive projections of pure data patterns that reduce information to its most elemental visual and sonic form.
James Turrell
Perceptual Art · Light & Space
Light and space as medium. Roden Crater — a dormant volcano reshaped into naked-eye observatory. Perception itself becomes the interactive interface.
§ 09 / GLOSSARY

Field Vocabulary

ACTUATOR
Device that produces physical output — motor, solenoid, speaker, light, servo — in response to control signals.
AMBIENT INTERACTION
System responses triggered by passive presence rather than explicit user actions.
BODY TRACKING
Real-time detection and analysis of human body position and movement within a capture space.
BLOB DETECTION
Computer vision technique that identifies regions of connected pixels representing distinct objects or persons.
DEPTH CAMERA
Sensor capturing per-pixel distance data (e.g. Kinect, RealSense, LiDAR). Enables 3D skeletal tracking.
FEEDBACK LOOP
Closed cycle of input → processing → output → perception that governs the quality of interactive experience.
FIRST MOVER PROBLEM
Social barrier in public installations: someone must go first before others will engage.
GESTURE RECOGNITION
Classification of intentional body movements as discrete commands or continuous control signals.
HRTF
Head-Related Transfer Function — filter simulating how ears perceive spatial audio in 3D space.
INFRARED
Light beyond visible spectrum (780nm+). Used for heat imaging, proximity sensing, and motion tracking in darkness.
INSTALLATION ART
Site-specific immersive artwork designed to transform spatial experience within a defined environment.
INTERACTIVITY
Bidirectional relationship between audience and system; the capacity for mutual influence and response.
LATENCY
Time delay between input event and system response. Below ~120ms feels immediate; above ~300ms breaks perceptual connection.
MAPPING
The defined relationship between a sensor value and an output parameter. Crucial creative decision in interaction design.
PARTICIPATORY DESIGN
Design methodology that involves future users in the creation process of the systems they will inhabit.
PHYSICAL COMPUTING
Creating systems that sense and respond to the physical world using microcontrollers, sensors, and actuators.
PROXIMITY
Measured distance between sensor and subject. Enables gradual, spatially-aware interaction design.
SENSOR
Device that detects physical phenomena — light, sound, distance, touch, temperature — and converts to electrical signal.
SKELETON TRACKING
Extraction of joint positions from depth data, representing the human body as an articulated skeletal model.
SPATIAL AUDIO
Sound design techniques that position audio sources in 3D space, responding to listener position and orientation.
TOUCHDESIGNER
Node-based visual programming environment for real-time interactive media, widely used in installations and performance.
TRIGGER
Threshold crossing that initiates a discrete event — the moment input passes from inaction to action.