Healing
Healing is a series of interactive floor pieces, each with a unique, dynamic pattern. These patterns pull away from visitors, creating wounds, which heal after the visitors leave. Each piece, however, heals itself in a different way.

Life Enhancement
Healing is an art piece that hopefully embodies questions and concerns relevant to our lives.

Goals
Healing explores responses to interaction. Contact between two entities changes both of them and so has a destructive quality. Change, however, forces growth, as the entities attempt to integrate the effects of the interaction, so contact can also have a regenerative quality. It is this growth in response to change that is the focus of these pieces.

Innovations
The system includes a video camera, a computer, a video projector, and a rubber mat. The camera looks down at the mat from the ceiling and captures video of both the mat and gallery visitors. The video is sent to the computer, hidden behind or mounted on a wall, where custom vision algorithms locate visitors and other foreign bodies. These locations are sent to the pattern-growth algorithm, which adjusts the pattern accordingly. The pattern is then sent to the projector and displayed on the mat.

The pattern-growth algorithms are based on reaction-diffusion equations, which describe the behavior of several chemicals diffusing over a surface and reacting with one another. Many natural patterns are thought to form through reaction-diffusion-like processes, including animal markings. The simulation algorithms must be fast enough so that the growth feels organic, but stable enough so that the simulation is always well behaved.

Presentation
Wednesday, 11 August
10:30 am - 12:15 pm
Room 404AB

Contact
Brian Knep
bkpub@blep.com