The artist Ian Haig is also interested in the interfaces but in Excelsior 3000 he takes it to new extremes. Toilets are cyborg technology and Haigs Excelsior 3000 moves to redefine the human bodies relationship with the toilet in the process of poking fun at the emerging market of high tech toilets. | | | Excelsior 3000 by Ian Haig. Bowel Technology Project, 2001. | Haig has created an interactive toilet, which in essence becomes an extension of the human digestive system.
The artists inventor Ulrike Gabriel has created a work entitled Terrain 01 this uses Gabriel's autonomous, cybernetic vehicles. The installation consists of a ‹microcosm› (a bordered-off semicircular, physical space) inhabited by a colony of small robots like autonomous, cybernetic vehicles. The robots equipped with photocells, so light becomes the main power source of this system. The sensors function like organs and allow freedom of movement in the microcosm and the ability to perceive the movement and position of others. A brainwave sensor, placed on the head of the interactant, measures his or her brain activity, which is sent to the system and controls the intensity of projected light. The immaterial form of communication (brain activity) with the internal and external world become reciprocal and inverted. The more intense or erratic the viewer’s brain activity the less light will strike the robots and the more apathetic the behavior of the colony will be. The sections that follow are many sensors that I have used or come across in the last few years. Sensor research and development is in extremely fast-paced and exciting area of that changes constantly and in order to stay up to date on sensors I recommend periodically checking out web sites such as: http://www.sensor.net/
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