This article was taken from the August 2013 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
For a musical instrument made out of Lycra and a Kinect, the Firewall has lofty origins: American musician Aaron Sherwood and Japanese dancer Kiori Kawai, preparing a piece called Mizalu for the Tribeca Performing Arts Centre, needed a mortal divider. "It's a performance piece about life and death," says Sherwood, 36. "We wanted to create barriers for the dancers, something they could press into, but not pass."
Michael Allison, a former classmate of Sherwood's from New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Programme, was then experimenting with the perfect partition: an interactive audiovisual display called Firewall. Fire-like visuals, created with Processing, an open-source language, are projected on to a stretched sheet of Lycra in front of a Kinect. "The further you press into the screen, the closer you get to the Kinect camera," says Allison, 27. "The visuals respond to that interaction."
The resistive qualities of the Lycra smooth out a user's gestures, providing the illusion that anyone interacting with Firewall can create controlled, expressive music. "A real musician isn't just playing staggered notes, they have dynamics in what they play," adds Sherwood. "The Firewall simulates that."
Mizalu (named after the "see no evil" monkey in Japanese culture) was first performed at Tribeca in June and will show at Burning Man in August. It features 20 dancers with two Firewalls, representing the doors to life and death. "We provided an environment that the dancers could interact with," Kawai explains. "The space and barriers supply the rules and theme, but the movement is the dancer's choice."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
