Department of Cultural Affairs

By Yali Chen
 
Do you know how to make an interactive kinetic art installation using Arduino IDE? The Taipei Digital Art Center (DAC) is holding a workshop on August 22 to walk you through making your own kinetic installation using this open-source electronics platform.
 
Local artist Lin Shu-yu (林書瑜) will lead the workshop. Born in Yilan County in 1988, Lin specializes in interactive installations and image art. He majored in optoelectronic engineering and has a master’s in new media arts from the Taipei National University of the Arts.
 
Kinetic art, or kineticism, is an international movement that developed in the mid-twentieth century and uses real or apparent movement to create its artistic effect.
 
When a body enters a space, it triggers progressive changes in the lighting, which modifies visual information and changes how we perceive the space.
 
“If we stop to consider this, it makes us dwell on the relationship between a subject (for example our human bodies) and the space we occupy,” said Lin. During the workshop, Lin will show participants how microcontrollers and computer programs control lights, motors, and other devices. When a body occupies a space, a sensor produces changes in light and shadow, distorting the usual visual experience of light and how it emerges.
 
Abstract expressionism is one kind of kinetic art. In the late 1940s and early 1950s Jackson Pollock, an American abstract expressionist, placed his canvases on the floor, where he could pour, drip, and splatter paint onto them and work on them from all sides.
 
By the 1940s, new styles of abstract expression, sculpture, and paintings, incorporated electronic inputs from audience members.
 
Today, kinetic art installations mean that three-dimensional art objects such as sculptures can incorporate movement powered by wind, motors, machines, electrical systems, and even the audience’s bodies.
 
The open-source electronics platform Arduino IDE is easy to use, with boards that have sensors that can read an input—such as light, a button press, or a Twitter message—and then turn it into an output that activates a motor or turn on an LED. You tell your board what to do by sending a set of instructions to the microcontroller.
 
Lin Shu-yu’s creations are inspired by his personal experience and observation of natural and scientific phenomena. Lin uses a wide variety of art forms to shape his creative style, including sensory interaction, mechanic dynamics, and kinetic installation art. In 2016, he won first prize at the Digital Art Awards Taipei.
 
During the 7-hour workshop session, Lin will teach participants to make their own kinetic installations using microcontrollers and programming language to control light and motors. Workshop attendees will learn to make their installations produce changes in light and shadow.