Thresholds, Baton Rouge, Louisiana

This installation explored interactive environments as a means of expressing new landscapes. It was originally installed in the atrium of Louisiana State University’s College of Art and Design and was selected as one of the eight projects for ACADIA 2008: Silicon + Skin.

Landscape surface is a dynamic and moving medium shaped through the natural processes of erosion, deposition, and the interplay of substrate and vegetative matter. This interaction creates complex three-dimensional surfaces that exist on a range of scales, from the structure of soil particles up to the tectonics of mountain ranges. Standard representational methods express the landscape in static modes and limited scales, often disconnecting humans from the environment they copy. Digital experimentation attempts to use phenomena (light) and human-scale interaction as methods for formulating and altering representations of landscapes. It explores the?limitations and possibilities of conventional representational systems and how they shape our perception of environments. Specifically, Thresholds examine isolines (curves that connect points where the function has the same value) to represent spatial relationships. Landscape surfaces are represented with contours, or isolines, to express similar elevations. About other contours, a clear image of the intricacies of a 3D surface is expressed in a 2D representation.

For this project, isolines define changes in contrast and are generated dynamically to create automated landscapes. Changes in value are calculated in real-time and are expressed by isolines – high contrast is represented by closer isolites and low contrast by wider ones. As pedestrians circulate and lighting conditions change throughout the day, the isolines are generated in real-time, creating new landscape representations. The installation consists of a large wall painted with a simple graphic, used as a datum to generate a baseline representation. This consists of twelve alternating greys strips, creating high and low-contrast moments. The wall is monitored by a single camera fed through an applet created to generate a real-time representation of the isolines. The isolines update at a rate of fifteen frames per second to create a fluid, real-time representation of the environment.