[project images]
Update:
Another, more complete version of this project was a
part of Mass Mass Media, an
installation that I did at 911 Media Arts Center in
Seattle, Washington. 350 People Reported
Killed is the edition of 10 acrylic cubes
made from the BBs dispensed during the exhibition,
The programming is the same, but I built a new BB enclosure
and mechanism that I think is much nicer. It was installed
with two other projects that are part of the same
suite.
"If it
bleeds, it leads." While a cliché, this phrase
succinctly expresses the media's fixation with tragedy.
This project uses a combination of live news feeds, custom
programming, and the Lego Mindstorms NXT (a programmable
robotics toy) to feed on that predilection.
In
this piece a computer program continuously scans the
headlines of 4,500 English-language news sources around the
world, looking for people who have been reported
killed. Each time it finds an article, an algorithm
determines the number of deaths, and instructs a
ceiling-mounted mechanism built from Legos to drop one
yellow BB per person. During the course of the
installation, BBs will accumulate on the floor,
contributing to an ever-growing constellation, ultimately
forming a sort of monument. At the beginning of an
installation the pellets will be sparsely scattered around
the space, and by the end they will form a dense and
chaotic arrangement, with errant BBs traveling throughout
the building.
There
is an inherent dichotomy between the playfulness of the
materials: the Legos, the bright yellow balls, the
plexi-glass BB hopper, and the sobering reality of the
subject matter. This tension is combined with the
viewer's natural inclination to expect and desire activity
from a kinetic sculpture. However, that desire
represents a morbid reality in that every time the
mechanism drops a ball, a real person has died. Thus
a confusing ethical situation exists; the viewer finds
himself secretly and selfishly waiting for someone to be
killed only so that he can watch a little yellow ball
bounce around on the floor. On the same note, there
exists a certain reassurance when the piece displays little
activity.
This
piece represents a complex layering of systems, methods,
and ideas. Hidden from the viewer is the computer
processing that monitors and parses the data and
communicates with the Lego NXT. A complicated system
is implemented to generate a seemingly simple outcome and
sparse aesthetic. The piece engages international
media and is dynamically influenced by the world’s
political environment. Conflicts and wars
dramatically affect the activity seen in the piece.
At times hundreds of pellets fire off in rapid
succession, while other times a lone BB falls to the
ground. The ironic reality is such that Monument
creates an aesthetic experience at the expense of human
tragedy just as the newspapers and TV broadcasts
do.
Time-lapse, approximately 5000 BBs dispensed.
19sec QuickTime
In-Studio Installation montage showing BBs dropping.
1min 53sec QuickTime
Some
Technical Details:
Using
the RSS feed of a
Google News search, a
PHP script scans all of
the headlines with the keyword “killed”.
It transforms all of the written numbers ("eight", "thirty
five thousand two hundred one," "three dozen") to
digits. The program compares the new headlines to
previous items in a database; if it is unique it adds it to
the database and runs through an algorithm to determine the
number of people reported killed in the headline. At
present, it is 90%-95% accurate and I am fine-tuning the
algorithm as the project runs. PHP then sends the
number of people killed and the run command to the
Lego Mindstorms NXT
using NeXTTool (a
command line program used to communicate with the Lego
NXT). The NXT then drops the balls at a rate of about
1.5 per second. Two motors are used, one to agitate
the BBs in the hopper and another to operate the BB
dispenser.
Thanks to Richard James Kendall for the PHP RSS Reader and John
Hansen for NeXTTool.
Download the PHP Source Code.