Touch Sensitive

Touch Sensitive is an interactive installation that delves into the intricate web of communication connecting humans, nature, and technology. The artwork explores how these elements interact and envisions their intertwined growth in the future. Using Arduinos, bamboo plants are made touch-sensitive, enabling the audience to generate a unique soundscape and lighting experience.

Sounds representative of iconic representation moments in communicative history have been morphed to create a melodious overall soundscape. Reverb, delay, and EQ modifications have been used to make the randomised elements harmoniously uncanny, immersing the audience in an alternative reality. 

A vinyl wrap that has incorporated conductive material is wrapped around the bamboo and printed with the same visual texture of the plant, mimicking its surface. Upon touching a reactive plant, a bright white LED will turn on and a sound will play. Blue wash lights delineate the ambient space and exaggeratedly cast the bamboo as blue-lit touch-sensitive surfaces like that of our ubiquitous smart-devices. 

The manipulation of familiar technology sounds uses the concept of the uncanny to subliminally question the sustainability of our current technological trajectory. The creative mixing of these sounds to be recognisable, but estranged in the natural environment, serves to highlight that technology, much like organic life, follows a life cycle - it grows, thrives, and eventually fades away. This intentionally re-centres nature's significant role in technological development.