Photo credit to WS developmentI’m For You (User Friendly)
In collaboration with SupernormalTeam: Elizabeth Christoforetti, Nathan Fash, Trent Fredrickson, Keith Hartwig, Hyunsuk Yun
“In a moment defined by social distancing, systemic loneliness, and political polarization, I’m for You (User Friendly) explores physical and digital closeness in the public realm.The work, situated at the center of the One Seaport courtyard, presents itself in two parts. A soft, corporeal form, dubbed “the Sloucher” by its designers, holds a silent conversation with a generic box that transforms itself by rolling through image after image to engage the form. The Sloucher responds and brightens as visitors approach, calming and slowing the image feed in response to closeness.The changing identity of the box surface speeds up as visitors become distant, presenting an alternative Seaport to the Sloucher. The box feed is the output of a machine learning model that is built from and trained on buildings in Boston’s least connected neighborhoods. Artificial intelligence provides a new, hybrid, and continuously becoming fragment of an imagined Boston that alternately mimics, compliments, and challenges its surroundings.The interactive piece will occupy public space during the shortest, coldest days of the year. It is designed to be most alive, engaging, and visible during the darkest and longest nights, when light is most scarce. I’m for You (User Friendly) is a reflection on real and imagined relationships between places, people, and their machines in a time of isolation.” Project Description by Supernormal
Role: media projection, electronics assembly in sloucher
Photo credit to WS development
Photo credit to WS development
Design process - tools used: stylegan machine learning, after effects, runway ML, unity3D
Photo credit to Elizabeth Christoforetti
Photo credit to WS development