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| Entropia Interactive sound-based installation Christian Marc Schmidt All inquiries: anything (at) adaptivelandscapes.com |
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Entropia is a typeface that responds to sound. Sound makes Entropia increasingly agitated, and the more agitated, the more illegible it becomes. Yet, the more illegible, the more unique it is: absorbed sound from the environment translates into modulations of the letterforms themselves, leaving behind an imprint of activity. Entropia can be set to various states of sensitivity, determining the speed of its growing deterioration. Based on single-stroke letterforms derived from the lettering at the base of the Trajan Column in Rome, Entropia is constantly changing, always in a state of becoming. |
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Entropia is shown as a context-specific installation. For a previous installation, Entropia was set to randomly display street names, drawing from an entire city database. The names were shown perpendicular to each-other using dual-core projection. At the freqency of one name per minute, it displayed fictitious intersections, pairing street names familiar to local visitors and exposing the tension between familiarity and alienation. Here, Entropia conjures up notions of a parallel city, one which is molded—again and again—by the interactions of the visitor. As the street names continue to cycle, their letterforms assimilate the sound in the environment—shifting, changing, and becoming increasingly abstract. |
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| Entropia was built in Adobe Director, and runs in a stand-alone application on a dedicated CPU. For installations, Entropia requires one CPU for each interactive display. Input from a built-in or external mic is converted into values which reposition vertex-points sequentially along each of the single-stroke letterforms. |
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This project began as part of an MFA thesis on adaptive design developed at the Yale School of Art. Conceptually, Entropia is concerned with language as an adaptive system and a container of activity. This piece juxtaposes the meaning of the depicted words with the incidental sound in the environment. The context within which Entropia is situated is a critical component of the piece, extending the meaning of the words shown on the display. Fundamentally, Entropia is a study in typographic form—it calls attention to the letterforms themselves, in particular the point where they tip from legibility into illegibility. | |
Christian Marc Schmidt is a multi-disciplinary designer and media artist. His experience spans a diverse range of design disciplines, including editorial, environmental and interaction design, as well as media installation and service design. His interest in working with information has lead him to an analytic approach that is decidedly parametric and content-oriented. Christian studied economics in Frankfurt, Germany, before moving to the US in 1999, where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Parsons School of Design in New York, and a Master of Fine Arts from the Yale University School of Art. |
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| Copyright © 2007 Christian Marc Schmidt. All rights reserved |
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