Healing Pool, Brian Knep, 2008

Six-channel interactive video installation;
computer, six video projectors, three video cameras, custom software, vinyl floor.

Healing Pool uses custom algorithms, cameras, and overlapping, high-definition projectors to create a seamless, glowing pool of organic patterns on the floor. The patterns are generated with a mathematical model first used by scientist to simulate firing patterns of brain neurons and later used to explore other visual and temporal forms found in nature.

Left alone, the patterns slowly pulsate and shift over the course of each day. When a person walks across the piece the patterns tear apart and rebuild themselves, but never exactly as before. The change is similar to a scar left behind when a wound heals. Thus the pool holds a history, or memory, of all the interactions that have occurred since the piece was first turned on.

Like the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, this project serves as a type of memorial, a constantly evolving record of change that honors the minuscule ways in which the slightest interactions—no matter how small or unintentional—have some impact. It is also an examination of how each person is, like the pool, a manifestation of everything that came before.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• knep
• boston
• art
• artist
• new
• media
• interactive
• video
• installation
• projection
• reaction
• diffusion
• emergent
• patterns
• science
• scientific