Screen Breach (Pasadena)
The “Screen Breach” technology is a tool that connects Videokaffe member studios to each other and allows us to collaborate across all distances and time zones. Through the “Screen Breach” we explore the nexus of physical craft and digital technology. The tangible and intangible. Sharing our skills, our hand work with people is a human approach to it. Videokaffe developed this tool to help collapse the physical and temporal distance between disparate locations and establish new protocols for how artists and designers could work together.
Screen breach is a networked studio system using web cameras and projectors to stream the audio and visual signals from the studio of one Videokaffe member and broadcast it to other members stu- dios. In this fashion Sebastian in Turku appears to be clambering on a chair on Mark’s wall in Stam- ford, CT while both are observed by audience in Japan. Light dependent resistors (LDR) placed in the projection area enable an artist in Turku to trigger an event in Chicago by changing the value of the pixel brightness where it intersects with the sensor. For example a mechanical device in Turku crosses the area occupied by the sensor in Chicago. A servo motor in Chicago is activated and turns a mech- anism which in turn affects something in Stamford and so on. In this fashion it is possible to connect studio spaces to develop and maintain working relationships, feedback, critique sessions, planning meetings and performative happenings.