The Kinetic Storyteller

Alexander Grace van Zyl

The Kinetic Storyteller

Interactive Installation

A playful environment for social connections, consisting of a pair of networked swings next to each other that materialise social media data through kinetics, play to create an interactive art installation.

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Presented at

SIGGRAPH Art Gallery: Data Materialities, (LA, US) 2016


Credits

Tine Bech Studio

Created in collaboration with engineer Louis Christodoulou

Videos by Tine Bech and Louis Christodoulou

Originally commissioned by SIGGRAPH Art Gallery (LA, US) 2016

Supported by SIGGRAPH Leonardo and The MIT Press, Ravensbourne University London


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A closeup of 2 participants swinging on Tine's interactive swing set, creating new combinations of colour and words with each movement.

As a participant swings on a structure, they are connected to the twitter stream of the networked landscape around them. With each kinetic swing rotation, new messages tagged with specific hashtags are presented on three large screens situated in front and to the sides of the participants.

The social interaction is not only to reveal data, here each swing seat generates different narratives. Thus the kinetic motion of the swings drive the data stream, illuminating this lost connection between our physical movement and the information that we generate, carrying with us daily from our mobile devices.

Each participant’s interaction with the swings materialises the data, that usually moves invisibly, through our environment via their social and kinetic engagement.

Social engagement in public spaces can be an awkward, challenging, and often a difficult experience for people unfamiliar with each other or their surroundings. The need for a non-partial mediator to connect people is something that artists have been tackling with their work for many years and is still being reinvented daily. This form of intervention allows for people occupying a space to engage in playful and anonymous interaction with others.

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2 participants swing on Tine's interactive swing set, creating new combinations of colour and words with each movement.
It’s a wonderful piece. It’s playful – and it’s a comment on the meaningless of data."Audiences at SIGGRAPH Art Gallery (LA, US) 2016

This interactive art installation can take the form of a simple note on the wall that reminds people that others exist around them, or a full-scale experience that encourages interaction between people as well as the invitation to play with technology.

The playground swing is one of life’s simplest pleasures. Feeling your suspended body move through space, rising and falling in a fixed arc that flows first with then against, the pull of gravity, is both thrilling and reassuring.

It remains a peerless, timeless invention and an open invitation to play, for children and adults alike. The Kinetic Storyteller is an interactive reinvention of the swing that brings additional dimensions to data materialisation.

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