Rachel Shin – LO 11

Emily Gobeille is a visual design, motion graphics, and interactions artist based in Brooklyn, New York and from Amsterdam, Netherlands who produces high-end installations for children. As an artist that values interaction with the audience, Gobeille sought to produce technology-based art that invited her audience members to directly interact with the piece. One of her interactive pieces, “Knee Deep,” invites children to “explore unexpected worlds of different proportions with their feet” (zanyparade.com). 

 

Gobeille created “Knee Deep” with openFrameworks and combined real-time greenscreening with stomp detection to produce an interactive space that revealed seemingly impossible scales of different landscapes like those on Earth and those in space. The stomp-detection aspect of “Knee Deep” allows children to interact with the piece physically, making it more than a visual thing to admire but a fun activity to spend time in.

 

I particularly liked this piece because it focuses its attention on children. Art is usually viewed as something for adults, but Gobeille breaks that stigma by steering the piece’s attention towards children and creating a space that allows them to interact with a seemingly impossible scenario. As a child, I often enjoyed the interactive, stomp-detection spots in Korean malls, not wanting to leave the mall for that sole reason. Artists like Gobeille provide children with a spark of curiosity that allow them to imagine beyond a real-time setting.