Ombea
Ombea is what Russian conceptual artist Ilya Kabakov calls a total installation, a designed experience. We can't use here Kaprow's term environment because Pash* (Martin Kohout) isn't surrounding visitor by no intentional means. On the contrary pash* is not even closing the visitors in a room, he is just putting away the outer world; introducing them to the Construct - blank virtual reality, a zero space.
from the review by Palo Fabuš for Furtherfield.org, read here.
4 speakers, 4 light sources and 2 cameras are placed within a space which is at least partially isolated from light and sound coming from outdoors and is provided with a lockable entrance; a computer is located outside the Ombea space with max/msp/jitter patch which serves to direct the space reaction.
Ombea is a way of the space to express itself.
Ombea reacts to movement of a visitor within the space depending on: [movement = dark + noise] or [calm = light + silence] and that reaction takes place on various levels depending on the history of behavior of a visitor and his possition in the space.
Visitor (or visitors) is „locked“ inside the ombea for 8 minutes the element of time being, therefore, also important part of ombea but anyone can leave sooner or later as he wants.
Awarded by the festival prize at the Lab30 festival in Augsburg at 2007.
Exhibited at Paraflows (Vienna, Austria, 2007), Lab30 (Augsburg, Germany, 2006), Brno Zoom Festival (Brno, Czech Republic, 2006) and more.
Author of the concept and Max/Jitter programming of behavior and operation is Martin Kohout (Pash*). The sound patch was programmed by Mash64 in Max/MSP and eletronic hardware was made by Viktor Soukal. First exhibited in 2006.
Very old interview about Ombea in quicktime here.
Panoramatic pictures from some of Ombea installation spaces.
Every visitor receives personal protocol mapping his behavior in Ombea. White is equal to calm and black is equal to maximum activity.
2006 — 2008