The Khronos Projector is an interactive-art installation allowing people to explore pre-recorded movie content in an entirely new way.
A classic video-tape allows a simple control of the reproducing process (stop, backward, forward, and elementary control on the reproduction speed). Modern digital players add little more than the possibility to perform random temporal jumps between image frames. The goal of the Khronos Projector is to go beyond these forms of exclusive temporal control, by giving the user an entirely new dimension to play with: by touching the projection screen, the user is able to send parts of the image forward or backwards in time. By actually touching a deformable projection screen, shaking it or curling it, separate "islands of time" as well as "temporal waves" are created within the visible frame. This is done by interactively reshaping a two-dimensional spatio-temporal surface that "cuts" the spatio-temporal volume of data generated by a movie.
Something new can be expected to emerge from this interactive experience: a new perspective on the recorded events and their temporal relationship - something perhaps not even accessible to the film maker in the first place. The spectator will be an explorer, waking her/his own path on the bulk spatio-temporal data of the movie, not helped nor constrained by the temporal arrow that fills space, dictates causality and creates understanding in a usual movie projection. At the same time, he will certainly feel lost: for to understand what's going on, will now demand an active participation, an exhaustive and conscious exploration of each portion of the visual space. We can say that by shattering the spatio-temporal volume of the movie, the Khronos projector forces our conscious attention over silent yet powerful perceptual-unification processes that encompass intensive recalling, spatial memory skills and logic reasoning. From my own experience with the Khronos projection, I believe this can be a puzzling and recreational experience for the public. Video explaining the technology and the installation. [.mov, 72mb] --- Alvaro Cassinelli Ishikawa-Namiki Laboratory - Department of Information Physics and Computing. The University of Tokyo. 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033 Japan. Tel: +81-3-5841-6937 / Fax: +81-3-5841-6952
