Interactive installation, 2008
The installation is made up of an ellipse-shaped, shallow translucent basin of water, in front of which stands a multitouch interface. White words and white drawings, video-projected onto the water’s surface, float slowly against a dark blue background. The interface enables visitors to draw a word or make a sketch directly with their hand, as if in the condensation on a window pane. Once a drawing is finished, it appears on the surface of the pool and drifts about with the others. The oldest sketches gradually fade out and make way for new ones. The whole thing also reflects the visitors’ different languages, like a kind of collective mirror.
When the visitors standing round the pool move their hands over the water, they can move the drawings, and/or regroup them, thus forming a sentence, or a larger sketch… The installation is also musical: each drawing is accompanied by a gamelan note; in colliding, they form a random orchestra. A circular relationship is established: taking it in turns, visitors write while others look on, and either play with the signs, or look at them.
