Knowmore - stage 1. Image of table being tested in production meeting

What is Knowmore?

Knowmore is an interactive installation (or immersive kinetic artwork) - it is best described by Keith Armstrong as:

“… a tabletop interactive work where the evolution of the images projected upon its top surface and spatial soundscape depends upon both how participants spin the table and how they move around it. Imagery projected onto a round table, can be interacted with by standing in various areas around the table and spinning its surface at varying speeds or direction.”

The artists involved are:

• Keith Armstrong (Artistic Director)
• Chris Barker (Co-director/3D Designer)
• Darren Pack (3D Engine Programming)
• Stuart Lawson (Visual Design)

The ideas present in Knowmore look at the impact of our actions upon a multitude of ecological systems. The work is a subtle metaphor that can be applied to our individual lives and to humanity as a whole.

Knowmore’s universal themes of causality and ecology are axiomatic to some cultures, but it suggests many of us living modern life styles have lost this understanding, become disconnected. This may be due to various reasons, but two of these are apparent in the work ( in stage 1… so far ):

1. Control
   A condition of humanity is our need for ownership and control. We are blinded by the implications of our actions in the establishment of control structures to gain the things we want; and sometimes if we do see the implications, we often don’t care anyway. However, for those who care: how do you counteract the existing controlling forces and what measure of force do you counter it with without creating an imbalance or additional complications?

2. Knowledge
   A condition of our humanity is curiosity and a hunger for knowledge.  To better understand things in our world and how they work, we categorise them into structures or constructs . We develop taxonomies and classifications for almost everything in our world. However, not every aspect of the things we try to classify is apparent at first. Sometimes we fail to recognise the similarities between separate entities/classifications.  This can lead to ambiguity of an entity’s purpose in relation to the whole in which it exists.  Thus, in seeking to know more about something we sometimes end up knowing less.

Project updates to follow.