Using the openFrameworks (oF) C++ toolkit, myself and my project partner Allen Wixted aimed to develop an interactive audiovisual artwork that investigates the idea of nation and nationality, nationalism and their closely related concepts.

Artistic Statement

The idea of national identity is often defined in terms of common origins, ethnicity or cultural ties. Nations consist of those who share language, traditions, music, sport, historical ties and political issues. Ordinarily it is the individual’s’ ability to express through these media that results in an organic national identity. However, there are examples whereby basic human rights and freedom of speech within some nations are manipulated and controlled. Our piece explores how the true representation of a nation cannot exist internationally if the voice of many is controlled by beliefs of one.

The role of the media for our reality is crucial. Most parts of the world we never see with our own eyes so therefore we rely on sources to give an honest depiction. Mass media matters for cultural identity, as they use and spread symbols; they matter for ethnic identity, as they spread beliefs; they matter for demotic identity, as they spread norms and values; and the matter for national identity, as all of these types of identity culminate in a nation. Countries such as China, Russia and North Korea are examples of those in power exploiting the media, suppressing the voice of many and misrepresenting their country. Essentially, those in power exercise their ability to pick and choose media representations.

During the China/Japan conflict in 2012 over the Diaoyu/Senkaku areas the Chinese government selectively allowed anti­government bloggers to post negative comments about Japan’s government during the initial stages of the dispute. This was done similarly with Twitter and Facebook during the Arab spring to show the international community how Japan’s actions had caused disruption to its citizens. There were multiple reasons for this: to allow nationalist bloggers to “blow off steam”, so as to not appear as interfering and promote further investigation and lastly as the anti­Japanese sentiments expressed were most likely in line with the Chinese government’s own rhetoric (Cairns and Carlson 2016). Manipulation and granted permission of posts that align with the desired national identity is clearly exhibited on Weibo. Just as removing unsavoury posts would favour the Chinese elite, keeping those, which support their rhetoric, is equally as important.

Similarly during the collapse of the Soviet Union, national identity and allegiance was at a critical turning point. Loyalties and views were shifting, changing the perception of the USSR. In a feeble attempt to halt this change an emergency law was invoked that resulted in the immediate shutdown of various newspapers, which did not align with the ‘desired’ national identity (“Television: the public sphere and national identity” 1996).

What is noteworthy is that many countries are now made of contrasting backgrounds. People of different languages, different cultures, must have a sense of identity also. They can express themselves in their own language, in their own culture. They are not asked to assimilate. This freedom of expression also contributes to an organic national identity. A strong national identity cannot be built by suppressing individuals’ voices. Our piece is a representation of how selected individual attributes, which make up a nation’s identity, are suppressed.

Technical Summary

As we iterated through different designs and mockups of applications and interactions that would best exhibit the concept we have outlined above, we settled on an abstract display to convey our research. One of the inspirations for our piece was one by Rafael Lozano Hemmer. His installation Open Air (2012) was relevant to Philadelphia’s rich tradition of democracy and respect for free speech. Although our product is not as developed and as grand as Open Air, we share the same philosophy that its core is the individual contribution.

There are two main interactions within the piece, audio input and gestural. Each interaction represents a specific group, which we investigated in our research. Audio is representative of the people, by literally allowing the installation’s audience’s voice to be heard it generates circles and squares of varying size and colour on screen. The dynamic reflects individualism in its purest form. The shapes are restricted into a circular area to constrain them within a physical and metaphorical border. Each shape, colour and text is generated randomly to emphasize the unique contribution of a person to an overall identity.

As for the other protagonist we used a leap motion add­on from the OpenFrameworks site to allow the “dictator”/controller to pick and choose which statements or ideals that he or she wanted to exhibit to the outside world to construct their national identity. This is a metaphorical representation of those in power can dictate distortion of the truth; whether that be to their own nation or international representation.

Classes and object oriented programming techniques were used to quickly build various shapes. These were then added to a modified leap motion project as recommended by the add­on creators. This meant that all supporting files were in place to allow the leap to communicate with OF. Stuart developed the visuals while Allen worked on the gestural controls and integrating the two together. We kept the concept closely in mind throughout our development process. Conditional statements and Booleans are used to detect when the user has spoken to generate the circles and squares and similarly to detect when the dictator has made a click or point motion with their index finger.

The screen visual sits idle until voice input triggers activity. Once a user triggers the visual, the programme makes use of the circle and rectangle classes. These classes are also dependent on the font class. The font class allowed us to add our own font and also center the text accurately within shapes. Careful use of counters and Booleans help us with error prevention i.e. the audiovisual constantly creating shapes unless an if condition was used for volume monitoring.

Once the dictator selects a message that they want to censor the shape then gets released from its border and becomes a representation of public perception of national identity. Due to the high accuracy of the leap motion it is possible to move your index finger over shapes and not click them until you’re ready and also to select individual shapes at a time. This high fidelity creates a strong connection between the user and the installation.

Controls

Leap Motion verison

­ Vocal Input ­ Creates random coloured shapes
Hand gesture ­ Selects shapes to release from boundary
Enter key ­ Clears arrays

Non Leap Motion verison (keyboard)

­ Vocal Input ­ Creates random coloured shapes
Press A ­ Creates random coloured shapes (commented out)
Mouse Movement ­ Selects shapes to release from boundary

Final Product

Images