HCI is a collaboration between FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) and Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, that investigates how we use and communicate with computers.
Three artists were commissioned to propose experiments, based on scientific principles of human-computer interaction that analyse how a variety of different users, from different backgrounds and levels of experience, interact with computers. The artists' experiments on view are the creative interpretation of this survey into the usability of interfaces. This project brings the theoretical, technical expertise of LJMU together with FACT's practical and creative knowledge for an unforgettable display of 'friendly' machines.
Simon Poulter
Poulter's work humorously explores the relationship that humans have with technology. He has built an online ATM, replacing the withdrawal of money with the provision of knowledge. This Automated Knowledge Machine gives the user the opportunity to explore knowledge transfer and the history of ideas and information, as if they were located on a very immediate and familiar everyday high street cash machine; it highlights the relevance of the Internet as the ultimate contemporary repository of these concepts.
www.viral.info
Josh Nimoy
Nimoy has developed a new series of sound-based software art pieces which attempt to eliminate the divide between the outside and the inside of computers. In Icon==Function the graphics that we see and play with on the screen - the icon - are a direct representation of the function that makes them happen. Together with these screen-based pieces, visitors will have the opportunity to use their whole body instead of a keyboard or mouse to control what happens on a life-size screen; Mixed Hello is an interactive projection that relies on camera vision technology to react to users shadows. The Icon==function series is the first ever art project hosted on free software repository sourceforge.net.
www.sourceforge.net/projects/iconeqfunction
www.jtnimoy.net
Caen Botto
Botto's C0D3 [the mechanics of a spell] is an online environment where users will be able to interact with each other. FACT offers visitors to the Media Lounge special access to this virtual place. The work takes the idea of disembodiment (the ability of doing without one's body) as the main objective and starting point from which to explore the similarities between magic and virtual worlds. Using motion-capture systems made out of plastic and aluminum foil, Caen connects his virtual, "coded" or "magik"(1) self to the millions of other disembodied souls roaming around the Internet.
www.universomente.xicnet.com
(1)From Tony Lane, on the "Cybermage" topic of BaphoNet, August 1991; as quoted in Mark Dery, Escape Velocity. Cyberculture at the End of the Century, 1996.
