The Change You Want To See Gallery is currently hosting SNIFF: public interactive projection project by Karolina Sobecka, with software design by Jim George. The projection can be viewed from the sidewalk outside the gallery after dark from Thursday, September 17 - Sunday, September 20. The project is associated with the 2009 Conflux Festival.
As you walk down the street you are approached by a dog. He is on his guard trying to discern your intentions. He will follow you and interpret your gestures as friendly or aggressive. He will try to engage you in a relationship and get you to pay attention to him. Sniff is an interactive projection in a storefront window. As the viewer walks by the projection, her movements and gestures are tracked by a computer vision system. A CG dog dynamically responds to these gestures and changes his behavior based on the state of engagement with the viewer.
Sniff from karolina sobecka on Vimeo.
CONCEPT
Sniff, simulating the visceral satisfaction of reality’s responsiveness and dynamism, is also an exploration of engagement of two different planes of understanding, and of relationships created by body’s presence in an environment. The experience is very familiar yet strange, leading us to re-examine notions we take for granted. Dog’s behavior externalizes the process of assessment, evaluation and testing we perform every time anything new enters in the scope of our experience. Sniff has us unwittingly enter into an exchange simply by following the basic instinct of stopping and looking at something that is paying attention to us. A tension is produced by a mixture of fears and expectations, curiosity and interest.
Sniff is supported by a Finishing Funds grant from the Experimental Television Center. The Experimental Television Center’s Finishing Funds program is supported by the Electronic Media and Film Program at the New York State Council on the Arts.