VE-Design: Evelyn Gavrilou, Vassilis Bourdakis, Dimitris Charitos, Coti K, Aris Tsangrassoulis, Andreas Andreou and Dimitris Skoufis
“DETOUR” is an interactive multisensory environment, created by the interdisciplinary group “VE_design”, as part of the “Athens by Art” international open-air exhibition that took place during the summer of 2004. This site-specific installation is specifically designed for a very busy area within the urban context. It functions as an alternative environment embedded within the noise and introversion of the everyday cityscape. Visitors are invited to participate in a mediated communication game with the “Detour” system, as well as with other visitors within the installation environment. “Detour” utilises a spatialised audio system, lighting, microclimate, and video elements with the aim of activating the senses, amplifying behaviors and instigating communication amongst its visitors.
DETOUR’s artificial “landscape” has a memory. People are invited to interact and provide their voices and images to the system. These are then captured, processed, distorted and dynamically positioned, in real time, within the 8-channel audio system of the installation as well as an appropriately placed video projection. Consequently, processed versions of these sounds and images are randomly selected and communicated again to future visitors of the environment. In this sense, DETOUR is an artificial “landscape” which remembers the voices and images of people who visited it and randomly recalls them, thus redefining all captured raw audiovisual content. Visitors may also affect the way that sounds are being displayed by appropriately moving their body in relation to certain elements of the environment.
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