CHallenge

How might we invite our viewer to mediate on our constant bond with the screen?

OUTCOME

Take Ctrl is an interactive installation that creates a fictional life and death situation controlled by your attention levels. A clip extracted from the “No Surprises” official music video by Radiohead is modified using a brain-control interface. The metaphor is created by linking the attention levels to the fate of Thom through the user’s control over the water level. By focusing on Thom you help him survive by lowering the water level, but as soon as you start mind-wandering, Thom drowns and suffocates; leaving you with insights about media and awareness.

Take Ctrl is an interactive installation that meditates on the links between real and digital space in relation to the real and digital self. By creating a link between brainwave biometrics and data, the project redefines what it means to be human from a state submersed in genetic memory to being reconfigured in the electromagnetic field of the circuit, in the realm of media in its visual form. A clip extracted from “no surprises” official video by Radiohead is modified according to the user’s attention levels. The video shows Thom York drowning. The metaphor is created by linking the attention levels to the fate of Thom through the user’s control over the water level. It is a life and death situation. The higher your attention level is, the lower the water level is and Thom survives. The lower your attention levels get, the higher the water level goes and Thom drowns and suffocates; leaving you with interesting facts about media and awareness. The installation is programmed on OpenFrameworks (code lives here) using a MindFlex connected to an Arduino in order to read the EEG values.

Materials

OpenFrameworks (code lives here), MindFlex, Arduino, Projector.

USER EXPERIENCe

Meditative, gamified, participatory, insightful, experiential. 

Roles

Concept design, hacking, physical computing, biofeedback, non-lineal narration, UX/UI.

design process

1- Identify Areas of Opportunity: Based on the given technologies capabilities.
2- Research: Precedents.
3- Ideate: Coding in OpenFrameworks.
4- Envision: How can the message be amplified using contemporary media?
5- Create: Rapid prototype.
6- Iterate: Determine the final scale and defining the challenges.
7- Build: Construct the full-scale prototype.
8- Iterate: Trouble shoot.

Project done in collaboration with Roula Gholmieh and Enrica Beccalli.