Abstract

In the last decade, the art and theater worlds have increasingly endeavored to create an immersive experience for their audiences. In many cases, this entails the use of cameras and other sensors, combined with recognition techniques so the audience can interact with the artwork. Recent machine learning advancements have increased the artists’ enthusiasm for creating technology-enhanced artworks. In this tutorial we examine methodologies to facilitate the creation of interactive art and theater, and show many examples of the final products.

The tutorial begins with history of early interactive art experiments, the Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) collaborations between artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and Merce Cunningham and Bell Labs engineers in the 1960s. We subsequently cover aspects of art to the present day including visual art, music, dance, and theater; and technologies including video, audio, biometrics, VR and AR, and machine learning. The level of depth in the course is appropriate for those wishing to choose, understand, and implement methods for creation of interactive art.

 

Shot Bio

Lawrence O’Gorman is a Fellow at Bell Labs Research in Murray Hill, NJ, leading work in video analytics. Previously he was Chief Scientist at Veridicom, a biometric company, and before that a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Bell Labs. He has taught in the area of multimedia security at Cooper Union and New York University.

He has published over 80 technical papers, 8 book chapters, holds over 35 patents, and is co-author of the books, “Practical Algorithms for Image Analysis” published by Cambridge University Press, and “Document Image Processing” published by IEEE Press. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and of the International Association for Pattern Recognition. He has been on the editorial boards of 4 journals, and has served on US government committees to NIST, NSF, NIJ, and NAE, and to France’s INRIA.

Dr. O’Gorman has collaborated on the creation of several interactive artworks including: Brooklyn Bloomswith NYU at the World Science Festival, 2013; Pixelpalooza with NYU at the Liberty Science Center, 2014-17; Butterflies Alight! with Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ, 2015; Omnia Per Omnia with Sougwen Chung at Mana Contemporary Gallery, 2018; and Indigo Grey with Hammerstep at Mana Contemporary Gallery, 2018.

He received the B.A.Sc., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Ottawa, University of Washington, and Carnegie Mellon University respectively.

He received the B.A.Sc., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Ottawa, University of Washington, and Carnegie Mellon University respectively.