Haystack Digital / Hand Array

Haystack Mountain School of Crafts

Deer Isle, Maine, US - 2002

The Digital and the Hand conference was a gathering at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute for Technology Media Lab. The October 2002 event involved fifty senior artists and educators exploring potential relationships of digital and craft media. Philip Beesley presented a geotextile installation to the conference composed of interlinking units with flexible joints that made a floating transparent lattice. The units were fabricated from resilient acrilyic sheets using a laser cutter.

Working with members of the Lifelong Kindergarten Unit within the MIT Media Lab, miniature computers operating vibrating actuators and controlled by light sensors were attached to each unit of the lattice. The construction resulted in a reflexive fabric that responded to the presence of viewers.