Sven Anderson | Exhibition Management

Eileen Carpio demonstrating Cajol, an interactive / immersive sound environment

During 2008 and 2009, I worked with the Music and Media Technologies (MMT) Department at Trinity College managing their graduate show exhibition. The students who emerge from this two-year course explore a range of projects for their final presentations, ranging from art installations to technology-focused demonstrations.

Managing these shows involved working closely with both the course directors, the students, and the staff at the exhibition venues (The Printing House and The Science Gallery in 2008, and The Joy Gallery in 2009) in order to ensure that the various works were displayed to their maximum potential, and that the exhibition as a whole was accessible to its audience. I offered advice and assistance to many of the students as they finished their projects (both on a technical and a conceptual level) and helped them develop their prototypes into fully-functioning installations within the exhibition.

My work with the students also included preparing them to present their projects to an external examiner, whose evaluation of their work determined their marks for the course.

Over the two years that I worked with them, the MMT students created projects that explored immersive sound spaces, locative media, gesture-controlled audio-visual systems, sensor-based interactive installations, sound therapy, multiple-projection visual environments, ambisonic spatialization techniques, and wave field synthesis.

The video stills shown here were taken from Mark Linnane's documentation of several MMT on Vimeo.

An audience member controlling a video by pulling a cord out of a fabricated well in Roberto Pugliese's Apparition Veil

Michael Kearns demonstrating A Comparative Study of 1st, 2nd and 3rd Order Ambisonic Decoders for Distributed Audiences

The Art of Decision

Exhibition Hardware Manager / Interaction Designer; 2005

Audience interacting with multiple-screen animations via sensors integrated into a floor-map

I worked for Fionnuala Conway on the project The Art of Decision, an immersive exhibition featuring a series of interactive artworks and spaces that provoked issues surrounding people's extrangement from political decision-making processes and power structures. I worked as a general hardware manager for the project (planning and overseeing the installation of the audio-visual, lighting, and other equipment), as well as serving as a general interaction designer, developing the software for many of the installations in the exhibition.

My work for this exhibition focused on GUI design, sensor networks, networking and synchronization of audiovisual systems running on multiple-computers, 3D data visualization, integrating mobile phones as interfaces with larger systems, live video capture and software manipulation, and audio design and spatialization within problematic acoustic spaces. I coordinated the installation of electronic hardware with the construction of purpose-built exhibition spaces, dynamically exploring various layout options for immersive interactive spaces. I also worked closely with graphic designers, a documentary film crew, and various institutions involved in the project to coordinate publicity and project documentation.

The installations were programmed using VVVV and Pure Data, utilizing prototypes that were created off-site and finalized / tuned within the actual exhibition space.

The Art of Decision exhibition took place between May 9 - 22, 2005 in a large warehouse space behind The Digital Hub in Dublin. For more information on the exhibition, visit www.artofdecision.net/.

The video stills shown here were taken from Mark Linnane's documentary on The Art of Decision.

Parabolic speakers distributing audio for video installation with multiple voiceovers

An audience member interacting with a 3D data visualization via a tactile interface / kiosk

Exhibition Management

Music and Media Technologies (MMT) Masters Degree Show 2008 & 2009

Exhibition Manager; 2008 & 2009

The Art of Decision

Exhibition Hardware Manager / Interaction Designer; 2005