Golan Levin — Manual Input Workstation

2004

Artists: Golan Levin, Zach Lieberman (collaborator), Jaap Blonk (sound, collaborator) · Year: 2004 · Medium: Interactive installation — real-time hand-shadow computer-vision performance · Substrate: Overhead projector, computer-vision tracking, sound synthesis; custom software · Place: Pittsburgh / Linz · Institution: Carnegie Mellon STUDIO for Creative Inquiry / Ars Electronica Golan Levin's Manual Input Workstation (2004), created with Zach Lieberman and Jaap Blonk, is an installation in which viewers sit at a small console that uses overhead projector technology and computer-vision tracking to translate the shadows of the viewer's hands into real-time projected compositions. Cover the projector's light with a hand, and the shape of your shadow becomes a visual element in a larger composition. Gesture with fingers, and the fingers become sonic triggers in an accompanying soundscape. The installation is a small, intimate performance instrument — not a gallery-scale spectacle but a close, single-user musical-visual experience. What Manual Input argued, in 2004, was that computer-vision could be an expressive input device — that the body's casual gestures, without any training or specialized equipment, could drive a meaningfully responsive artwork. This was six years before the consumer Kinect camera would make computer-vision tracking accessible to hobbyist developers; Levin's installation anticipated the entire subsequent wave of gesture-based interactive art. His collaborator Lieberman would go on to co-create openFrameworks and to expand computer-vision work significantly in the subsequent decade. Levin's broader practice has been consistently located in the overlap of computer vision, sound, and interactive installation. His 1998 MFA thesis at CMU produced the AVES audiovisual performance instrument, which prefigured much of his later work. He has taught at Carnegie Mellon's Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry since 2004 and remains one of the field's most consistent pedagogical presences. He is still working, still teaching. Lore Manual Input Workstation was exhibited at Ars Electronica, at multiple international new-media festivals, and at a handful of museum group shows. Jaap Blonk, the Dutch sound artist, contributed the initial sound design; Levin and Lieberman contributed the visual system. Levin has maintained flong.com — his personal archive and writing — as a primary reference source for the creative-coding community for more than two decades. Sources • Levin, Golan — flong.com archive • Carnegie Mellon — Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry • Ars Electronica Archive