The first Diffrazioni Multimedia Festival recently took place at Bardini Museum in Firenze, Italy. One key interactive installation was supported by DEVA, the technology created by Powersoft. Conceived as a metaphor for life, Alfonso Belfiore’s SPAWN make the game used DEVA equipment scattered throughout the park, spreading music and taking pictures while communicating with each other.
Six solar powered DEVAs were placed in the garden of the Bardini Museum, playing audio files and detecting the movement of visitors, while taking a picture sequence. DEVA then provided frames via Wifi to a computer which stored the captured “memories’ and, through an algorithm in Max / MSP, was able to recompose them in movie sequences.
DEVA is a patented multifunctional device that enables audio messaging and video capture. It is equipped with several sensors (microphone, presence detector, twilight switch, temperature / humidity / pressure measurement) and accessories such as LED lights.
Belfiore explains: “As in a video game, the appearance of a new character is the event that opens up new possibilities and opportunities. Thus, for the visitor, the discovery of their image within the work is the acknowledgment of the inevitable participation of one’s being to the history and life, while the transfigured vision of its image fully reveals new aspects of their identity with the eyes of others.’
In this context DEVA assumed the central role, representing a kind of gateway to an unreachable world; the place where the experience of the encounter becomes a recorded image in the memory, with potentially a new life, new possibilities and new meanings.
