Shanghai Embedded Project

About
 
Thistemporary, interactive installation was based on the concept of ‘complexsystems’ which can observe, perceive and research our living world, society andbiology.  Virtual architecture isembedded into various cities and regions within Google earth projected onto thefloor, within the internal space of the installation.  Motion sensors track the movement of theaudience within the internal space, and the projectors respond according tothese inputs. By using this interactive technology, members of the audience cantrigger and control the projected scene by changing the displacement of theirown body or altering the distance between each other within the projectiveregions.  The audiences are provided withunusual perspectives to view the globe, our city, open fields, as well as the algorithmicarchitectures embedded into the Google Earth projection.
 
Thissystem establishes an evident but uncertain logical relationship between the movementof people, visual experience and “urban messages”. The audience can observe theprocess of urban change within the projection.
 
 
Design
 
Thefaces of the box were designed using a recursion algorithm, based upon atriangular fractal pattern.  Eachtriangle is sub-divided or ‘cracked’ again and again to create smaller andsmaller triangles and a denser pattern. At each stage, two out of the three segments are cracked, so that onelarge segment remains intact to create variation in scale across the surface.  At each cracking, the new triangles areraised, perpendicularly by 12cm to create the three-dimensional, surfacepattern on the faces of the installation.
 
Abandoningtraditional architectural design methodology and using this computationalalgorithm, the artists(architects) seek to challenge the traditional top-downdesign method. Connecting the logic of the algorithm and its execution processwith physical architecture can generate unexpected results. To visualize theseresults, the generated digital data (the three-dimensional architecturalmodels) are embedded into the Google Earth projections.  Hence the installation design is virtually-embeddedwithin its own physical, architectural manifestation.