evolvr /// 2007 /// Interactive Net Installation /// Ronald Genswaider
Probably the most well-known photo-community on the net, flickr.com, stands for a new, emancipated generation of consumers on the internet. They are users who create contents and offers by themselves, exchange information and freely distribute on the net. The work evolvr uses this community and their products in order to generate associative picture sequences and to project these publicly. The viewer stands in front of a projected large-scale display. Menu bars to the right and left of this facilitate the selection of a color by means of a laserpointer (the wireless interface) and a line width. With this variable color line, a line is then painted onto the projected picture. This picture is then used by a search algorithm in order to find similar pictures on the interned and to thereby initiate a new picture series. The distribution of color in the picture of the on-site visitor drawings are analyzed by a special algorithm in order to find additional, appropriate pictures with a similar distribution of color from flickr.com. The picture with the highest degree of color conformity is cross-faded with the original picture and serves, in turn, as the basis for the succeeding picture. The visitor becomes a painter, makes his own colored drawings and thereby releases a chain of other pictures which are then made available to other users on the net. (Text: Ronald Genswaider)
Ronald Genswaider (*1976 in Vienna) studied digital art under Thomas Fürstner at the University of Applied Art and lives and works in Vienna as a media artist and freelancer. The central theme of his work concerns the membranes between social and technical reality, which express themselves in the form of installations, interactive applications and visualizations.
Ronald Genswaider, evolvr, 2007, interactive Net Installation, loaned by the artist
