OP_ERA Daniela Kutschat and Rejane Cantoni

In its United States premier, the Beall Center for Art and Technology is pleased to present this award-winning interactive art exhibition from Brazil, OP_ERA: SONIC DIMENSION, an immersive virtual reality installation designed as a music box.

OP_ERA: sonic dimension is an immersive and interactive installation designed as a music box. The box is a black, open cube (three walls of 3x3m each) filled with hundreds of visually identical violin-like strings. Tuned with the specific tension, each virtual string vibrates with a visual-sound frequency (light and sound waves) that varies according to its relative position and mode of interaction. The objective of this project is to research the geometry of sonic spaces and to develop sonic interfaces.

In OP_ERA: sonic dimension there are two modes of interaction. In the first case, the input interface is a 360 microphone that collects the user’s sounds. When the microphone picks up a sound, the software analyses, and filters and converts it into equivalent visual outputs. If the user sounds like an F, he will see the relative F frequencies vibrating as strings according to Pythagorean principles. In the second case, the input interface is an array of sensors. Used to detect the user’s position this interface allows the system to interpret any action as a gravitational force. For example, when the user points to a string set, the action not only vibrates the selected strings, but it also changes the shape of space time.