Joey van der Bie

Do we see the boundaries?
Every object forces its own boundaries upon their environment. Most boundaries are so common (or hidden) that we don’t see them. This creates situations in which our current values are undermined. We would like to make people more open for common and hidden boundaries, and allow them to adjust the boundaries to support their own values.

An example is the living room, it has been transformed from a social gathering room to a home cinema, where the TV is often more important than the people in the room. Do we really think the TV is so important that it can rule above people? “Social Television” discusses the transformation of the living room and adapts the TV to support the social happening.

Flyer Media Technology Expo

Social Television was made by Maarten Melenhorst and me for the MSc. Media Technology Exhibition: Crisis, a non economical approach. Which lasted from January 7th-10th and 14th-17th 2010. It was in the great room of the V2 (Institute for unstable media) at Eendrachtstraat 10, Rotterdam.

Social Television exist of 2 parts:
The first part is a family arguing about the hidden boundary, thus making the boundary visible. It is displayed by two person-like looking dolls with televisions/eMacs as heads, ironically themselves being part of the boundary.
The second part is allowing the public to shift this boundary, lowering it by pausing the video. And only being active when 2 people are taking part of the installation.

We used one server machine running a Max/Msp/Jitter patch which makes al the important decisions and plays the videos on the TV. To this server are two eMacs connected running a Max/Msp/Jitter patch to play videos. Also a pause button is laying on the table, and two Dance Dance Revolution pressure sensitive floormats are used to register couch movement. While no activity on the couch the patch directs the eMacs to play random videos to create small dialogues. Once two people have taken place on the couch, the two eMacs are directed to play a pause video in a loop and the pause button gets activated. When the pause button gets pushed the TV goes on pause until at least one person leaves the couch or the pause button gets pressed again. Once one or more people leave the couch the eMacs are directed to play their random videos again.

During the exhibition we got responses varying from positive to people not agreeing with the concept. But also debates about revalidating common values happened! Only we did had difficulties with the self explaining factor of the installation. Most people came for quick sightseeing and because our installation asked at least 5 minutes of your time, sometimes people left before they got the concept. Overall we were pleased with the result, only next time we would make an installation which allowed more for a quick view and do more field testing before displaying.

See for more pictures the picasa album: