Digital art´s hunt for new user interfaces

Computer specialists are not the only ones responsible for developing new user interfaces. Artists can also have their say when it comes to looking at new ways of communicating with machines. The `DarkMatr´-project in IBBT´s Art&D program is a good example.

Art&D is a research program, which started in 2007, based on the assumption that the creative aspects of technological innovation are growing in importance. Brussels-based artist Tom Heene briefed IBBT researchers on his project during a Friday Food session at IBBT. During the DarkMatr project, he worked closely with Dries De Roeck and Dirk Bollen of the Center for User Experience Research (CUO, Universiteit Leuven).

DarkMatr investigates how the Internet and the real world can work together and create a total experience for the user. Heene & co opted for the art form of an `immersive´ environment in which a user becomes part of the system. The name DarkMatr refers to the void that researcher Dries De Roeck experiences between the user and the information on the Internet.

DarkMatr is an installation that only one spectator at a time can enter. The person´s silhouette is projected onto a screen and is filmed from the back of the screen. Words are projected onto the screen. As the silhouette touches these words, new words are extracted from the Internet and placed into a word cloud. Images are added to the words, and sounds emanate forth, immersing the spectator in a total experience of word, image and sound: an overwhelming experience symbolizing the overload of data on the Internet.

The installation had to undergo a number of technological experiments, especially regarding the texture of the screen and the quality of the camera. A team of code artists worked  together with Tom Heene to develop search engines that extracted words, images and sound fragments from wordnet, flickr and freesound. When programming, they only used open source tools such as Processing, Pure Data and Python.

According to Tom Heene the project gave him a lot of insight into the world of IT. He also took away a number of new techniques that he can reuse in his film and digital art projects. From a scientific point of view, the project is likely to lead to further research on user interfaces. One of the most important lessons Dries De Roeck learned from the project is the need for a common language between artist and scientist.