
The Wooden Mirror project is an art installation, and as such the goals leading to its creation are a bit vague. The piece explores the line between analog and digital. In the essence of the piece is the notion of inflicting digital order on a material that is as analog as it gets ñ wood. I was hoping to take the computational power of a computer and video camera , and seamlessly integrate them into the physicality warmth and beauty of a wooden mirror. The piece reflects any object or person in front of it by organizing the wooden pieces. It moves fast enough to create live animation. The simple interaction between the viewer and the piece remove any questions regarding how to operate the piece, it is a mirror. The non reflective surfaces of the wood are able to reflect an image thanks to the involvement of the computer that is manipulating them to reflect more or less light as they tilt towards or away of a light source. The image reflected in the mirror is a very minimal one. It is, I believe, the least amount of information required to convey a picture (Less than an icon on a computer and without color) It is amazing how little information this is for a computer, and yet how much character it can have, (and what an endeavor it is to create it in the physical world). The Mirror produces a distinctive sound when someone moves in front of it. It is the sound of hundreds of tiny motors. The sound is directly correlated to the motion of the person in front of it, and gives a very pleasing secondary feed back to the image.


