This project was created to give presence to those who were unable to attend the 10th anniversary of CIID, held at the beginning of September 2016. By experimenting with old CRT TV’s, we developed an interface that juxtaposed the analog with the digital, and further instilled a sense of distance. The idea was to provide a web application that allowed all invitees who couldn’t join to experience the happenings, and directly dial into the physical space of the event.

The website ‘analoggathering.space’ was created to stream images from an external camera that was pointing at the installation. By using web RTC for direct online video calls and physical computing technologies, we were able to translate the digital into an analog signal, which meant each call could be materialised and cued into a loop of analog inputs.

The geographical distance of each call was tracked and mapped on to a crown of six electro magnets attached to the back of the cathode ray tube – it was used to control the level of distortion for each frame of the call chain display. The further away the caller the greater the distortion.

This opened up a discussion on what to depict with the level of distortion – was it the old antenna metaphor or should we twist it around punishing those who call from close for not spending the week with the CIID network?

Technologies

– HTML5 & JavaScript
– Socket.io
– Node.js
– Arduino
– Processing
– Raspbeyry Pi