This is an amazing example of how interactivity can me magnified to a whole different scale. Specially commissioned by the City of Santa Monica, California, for Glow 08, Primal Source was an all-night performance/installation brought to life through the active participation of festival-goers (estimated at approx. 200,000 over the course of the night).
Located on the beach near the Pier in an area that had been specifically landscaped over the course of several days, and making use of a large-scale outdoor waterscreen/mist projection system, the mirage-like installation glowed with colours and ebullient patterns created in response to the competing and collaborative voices, music and screams of people nearby.
As you can see from the video they placed microphones at the projection so that sounds could be picked up. The projection responded to sounds coming from the crowd and the system's modes changed every few minutes depending on how active the crowd participation was (more quickly when there was more noise). Each mode responded in a slightly different way to the individual voices and sounds picked up by 8 microphones distributed towards the front.
Some modes created "creatures" whose colour, shape and movement followed the frequency and amplitude dynamics of individual syllables and sentences picked up; other modes responded to wider collective phenomena, e.g. distorting a grid in response to the crowd volume, or creating a rush of wind through a wheat-field landscape.
I am fascinated by the use of digital media in this piece and I feel that it is truly cutting edge work. I would love to see this type of projection used in all festivals but also it should be used for advertising as because it is so unusual people would immediately pay attention.
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