The film by Neil Hopkins and Vaidotas Ambrozaitis in action

Story: Chris Hales
Four interactive film projects were completed during the recent one-week workshop led by Chris Hales. Three of the films were designed as interactive installations, whereas the remaining work was an educational film about gravity designed for children.


This film, designed by Neil Hopkins and produced by Vaidotas Ambrozaitis, used NASA space footage to make the understanding of gravity enjoyable for children. Two sets of inflated balloons form the interface, half the balloons being yellow and half the balloons being blue. Children have to keep hitting balloons in the air in order to win a 'space-race' between yellow and blue teams - a video image of the ceiling is analysed to work out when yellow or blue balloons are in the air - and the on-screen video changes accordingly.

Interactive projection by Olav Huizer

Amongst the three installations, Olav Huizer made a projection of a sinister bird onto the door of Spede - when visitors walk into the Spede room (where Olav is showing another project) the bird projected on the door appears to fly off, returning shortly afterwards. The interaction technology here was to place a microphone on the floor outside the Spede room - when a high sound-level impulse is detected the system knows that a visitor is entering the room.


Of the two remaining projects, Ruth Hogger experimented with using a re-wired keyboard to make a film in which viewers could 'walk' through videos of the 3rd floor corridor to visit the fine art studios and 'collect' paintings observed there. Ruth constructed foot pads out of cardboard, foam, foil, tape, and a old piece of telephone cable so that physical walking on the foot pads results in the video of the corridor-walking to progress forwards.

The final workshop creation, from Vladimir Kvasnikov, was composed of about 60 videos filmed in the streets of Tampere and divided into 5 categories such as 'people' and 'landscapes'. A webcam points down at a table on which 5 coloured counters (one for each video category) can be moved around in order make unique layered compositions, new videos being introduced by pressing keys on the keyboard.

Photos and videos: Vladimir Kvasnikov