visit: imamterial.cloud

immaterial.cloud is an immersive audiovisual installation that explores a possible networked future of peer-to-peer technologies, away from the cloud. Participants experience the work via two to four smartphones placed in different locations in a room. As participants walk up to a phone, they see a representation of themselves through data. If the participant gets close enough, the phone triggers a change in the sound of immaterial.cloud and the other phones follow.

immaterial.cloud creates the opportunity for a shared space with participants by using technology in a collective way. It requires the phones to act together, and out of their hands, not as individuals as is usual in this era of personalized devices. Experiencing immaterial.cloud presents an opportunity for a restoration of attention that might have been lost by an overuse of technology in the typical way.

The concept for immaterial.cloud emerged as a way to create a communal experience during the COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders in which many people have turned to the internet for communication and entertainment. While social networks such as Facebook or Google seek our attention for profit, immaterial.cloud seeks a deep attention that creates a shared sense of place and time for the participants.

immaterial.cloud uses peer-to-peer technologies to send data between phones without the need for an intermediary server. The PeerJS library is used to manage WebRTC connections to send data between phones. The application is hosted on IPFS, a peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol, which removes the need for centralized server hosting. The participant interaction of waving a hand around in front of a phone to trigger changes is accomplished by using the phone's onboard camera and tracking motion. Each phone is assigned an ID along with one of four samples and presets so that when a participant waves in front of one specific phone it will have a predictable outcome.

This work needs 2-4 smartphones (iPhone or Android) connected to the internet via WiFi or a cellular network. All sound during the installation is played over the phones. A participant joins the network by going to https://immaterial.cloud and entering the ID of a chosen "host" phone. No extra software is required to participate. immaterial.cloud will work with a group of participants or just one.

Demo Video

immaterialcloud from Tate Carson on Vimeo.

Exhibitions