[CHRIS BURKE PERFORMING WITH THE INTERACTOPUS]

CHRIS BURKE: My name is Chris Burke. I go to the Art Institute of Chicago. I decided to come to the Art Institute because they treat sound as an artistic medium, which I thought was really hip.

This is the Interactopus. It has eight light sensors which communicate with my computer through the ArtBus board, which is a project developed at the Art Institute by Ed Bennett, [PH] Laura Emilianoff, and a few other names. Basically, there are photocells at the end of each of these. There’s eight of them. [IN A HIGH PITCHED VOICE] Hi there! At Radio Shack, they’re really cheap. They all transfer numbers to a computer program that I wrote in Max/MSP and also since I can’t afford Jitter, Cycling74, using PureData and [PH] Jam, which is the open source equivalent, but it transfers the numbers that these eyes give me based on light and shadow and turns them into sound and video.

When I started out, I wasn’t actually working video at all but somewhere along the line I figured out a way to use the open source program, Jam. Jam is really a great alternative to Jitter. I decided that since I’m, you know, playing it as an instrument which is a visual component as well as the audio comes out it, I wanted to sort of cross those two media because I am a multimedia artist and I should be working in as many as I can, and so that encouraged me to kind of figure out a way to use video and have it respond in the same way that the sounds did.

So, as I move this, it’s -- like if I point it at you, it’s getting the light off of you. If I point it at me, it’s getting the light off of me. If I point it over there, it’s getting floor and those overheads, and that really makes it a pretty versatile instrument because you can have two people playing it like this or one person, four people in a circle, and even if everybody wants to get all cozy with it, it’s got other sensors asides from the arms. It’s got eight in all hence the title Interactopus.

Well, the biggest challenge is working with new technology because it’s buggy, it’s still in development, and I’m decent at programming, I’m decent at building things but working with something that somebody else is still developing, hands down a lot of technical difficulties to me that I have to work around. For example, it's tough to control which of these goes where in the program, so I kind of have to fledge it around a little every time I work it up and a way that I've worked around it is basically not carrying what corresponds to what. So, each of these kind of does a similar thing and it doesn't matter which does what and still end up with a good piece.

The biggest surprise I think was that it could play a room by itself. Sometimes it does stuff without even moving because if there's changing light in a room or if it moves at all in a room then obviously these sensors are getting different information based on what the ambient light is. So, it will give you -- it will give the program different information and the program will send out different sounds and videos based on where it is positioned in a room facing who's near it, what they're doing, and it's -- I think that was the most surprising thing was the amount of situations that this is actually sensitive to.

The non-audio construction of this is found leather, recycled leather pants actually, that I found in the dumpster, a whole box of them. They were brand new with price tags on them so I think I beat somebody who worked at the store to the dumpster, and so yeah. Recycled leather and recycled armature wire. I think this was maybe from a dummy that perhaps wore the leather pants. I found a lot of things in the trash. It's tough as an artist to actually buy anything to I usually work with free materials.

If I were, you know, had a little money to throw around, I would do infrared because then it wouldn't be as dependent on natural light and ambient light but honestly I like the fact that this is subject to its environment rather than just distance of something from the sensor.

I think I would probably like to make this some sort of installation for -- make it bigger, make it more engaging, and incorporate the viewer as an interactive audience/performer so that it would be an installation you can walk into and participate in.