Client: Ingenuity Festival

Overview

Hybrid Collaboration is an interactive sculpture made of cast aluminum, cast glass, and custom electronics. Viewers can send text messages to the sculpture with specific words like #blue, #purple, or #orange. Once the sculpture receives three of the same word it changes to that color or pattern.

Goals

The goals for this project were to make an interactive sculpture that would use a readily available technology, like texting from cell phones, to give the viewer a sense of ownership or participation in the work. These goals were critical in determining the overall design, and the translation of control from human to machine was metaphorically explored through the visual merging of plant and human body forms seen in the sculpture.

Process

James Krouse was the artistic director of Ingenuity Fest and it was through conversations with him that the idea for this work developed. As an artistic director, James excels at finding unique works of art and technology, and artists who make this kind of work, and he is passionately dedicated to promoting these artists and finding support for these unique projects.