The laser harp's form is close to a medieval travel harp and contains a physical modeling synthesizer to be controlled by means of optoelectronic sensors . The Sculpture creates a realistic illusion of a classic playable instrument.

concept and realisation incl. sound and programming by Humatic with
Peter Knabl (wood works and assembling) & Zhipeng Liang (electronics).

Martin Luther Encounter

The work has a linear soundtrack but about 100 movie segments which seamless connect to eachother according to the state of the installation , user's activity measured by a kinect sensor or similar and the progress of the 'story'. The installation which follows Humatic's concept 'audio-elastic apparition' makes the visitor listen to the thoughts of the protagonist while he can interact until he gets confronted with lipsynced story parts in direct speach.

concept : the apparition / audio elastic

In so called audio elastic projects a person from the past or a popstar from ourdays or your company director lets us know details of his/her life while we see him in her original environment. He is writing, waiting, eating when he feels unobserved. If we enter a sensor detected zone the protagonist does an inviting gesture to make us come closer. When we are in the main area he continues the daily business but keep eye contact with us from time. In case we come too close he gets a little nervous and his gesture let us know that we should better step back.I f we do not fulfill the wish and come even closer he can get under stress or simply ignores us.

... You might say ...we saw this already in Humatic's installation 'Seduc-A' from 1999 ( http://www.humatic.de/P/seduca.htm) where as well the distance between video-character and user was the mood driving force of a screen lady from rejection to flirt. But this time we are 'audio- elastic' ! : not only the audience behavior but as well the story we hear influences the flow of the nonlinear movie and so-with his behavior . surprisingly a few sentences are spoken lip-synced and addressed directly to the audience. That means the installation handles a bidirectional time travel : First we can interact with a pseudo-real character of the past, second a part of her non abruptive video performance seems to be directed to us. The magical moments where in the middle of her thought- excursion he asks a question to the visitors makes us feel her even more alive and helps us to understand that we are not only looking in to the past but he seems to look into our presence / his future too.

... 'audio elastic apparition' opens an new field for exploration in 'digital story telling'