SYMBIOSIS O: VOXEL

Symbiosis is a project Kärt founded together with a hungarian designer Eszter Ozsvald in 2009. As Symbiosis, the duo developed and realised a series of speculative textile concepts, one of which was SymbiosisO: Voxel. 

It was an interactive textile installation at Tribeca Issey Miyake, New York, USA in 2012

 

It was a collaboration between Kärt, Ester and american interaction artist Alex Dodge. 

SymbiosisO: Voxel was an interactive textile installation, on exhibition at New York’s tribeca Issey Miyake showroom and gallery space. Composed of a structure of interlocking honeycomb-shaped ‘voxels’, each unit was dyed with heat-activated thermochromic ink, connected to a custom electronics system in order to respond to physical and virtual stimuli. Users could interact with the work by touching it– leaving a highlighted imprint on the fabric– or via a web interface that allowed them to design multi-frame animations to be played back on the piece.

Using their iPhones and iPads on-site in the space, users could visit the web-based interface and tap on individual voxels on the screen to create a pattern (or a number of changing patterns). By pressing submit, the textile installation at Tribeca Issey Miyake played back the image or recording.

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Later the same installation was presented in Scin Gallery, London and Applied Art and Design Museum, Tallinn.

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Year: 2012 - 2013

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Credits

Concept, design and development:

Ezster Ozsvald, Alex Dodge and Kärt Ojavee

Installing in New York: Alex Dodge, Eszter Ozsvald

Producer: Robert von Leszczynski

Installing in Tallinn and London: Kärt Ojavee

Photos: Ezster Ozsvald, Alex Dodge, Kärt Ojavee

Electronics and programming: Jaan Rebane