Perspective (I) is an interactive installation consisting of a projection of vertical lines generated by a computer with a webcam for movement detection. It is designed to intervene in spaces architecturally thought for the transit of people, access and interchange -as a corridor, e.g.-. It is not an intervention made for a specific space, but an installation conceived as an architectural element –as a window or a colonnade - inserting a virtual and a dialectical dimension of space in space itself.

The installation is proposed as a reflection over the origin of space through the notion of perspective intuition and the visitors movement. It is considered to be a work in the context of art & science, as it seeks to place the dialectic and the mechanisms of illusion and reference into the concept of discovery, which is meant to gather the aim of objectivity and universal dialogue of science, to approach it to the subjective and symbolic dimension of the artistic work.

The installation consists of a projection on a wall in a transit space -as a corridor- where, over a black background, a set of vertical white light lines appears, moves, and disappears as a result of the intersections of invisible circles. This set of lines and circles reacts to the visitors' movement as they cross the corridor, thanks to a webcam connected to a computer.

White lines are treated in such a way that they arise as light emitters. Thus, instead of showing behaviors of white synthesized lines, these stress their own nature of projected light as their luminosities add up and spread constructing the illusion of the final image. As lines spontaneously cluster, this effect becomes particularly noticeable, their luminosities playing to the final foreshortening of depth.

Reaction to visitors. While there's no movement detected, the vertical light lines own a quiet horizontal movement, due apparently to randomness, which creates and dissolves a feeling of depth and perspective simultaneously and in different places over the projection. The projection itself appears on the wall as a perspective curtain smoothly shaked by the murmur of an imaginary breeze, the calculus breeze.

When a visitor approaches, the lines lengthen, they accompany him in his movement and begin to disappear, as if the mechanism creating the illusion woke up. While it is still creating the illusion, the set of lines fading out show the dynamics of a moving perspective -a forest from the car's window- as well as its illusory origin, its mechanism; in this case, the circles intersecting.

If the visitor continues to move for a while, all the lines fade out in the black background. These won't appear again until the movement stops. As the lines come back, they grow from the projection's background, creating and dissolving perspectives, waking up again illusions of real space while they travel across their virtuallity.

This relation cycle accompanying the visitor, who doesn't expect to find such a reactivity in a space he is used to cross, tries essencially, from the first surprise effect, to suggest a relation between his movement and the illusion's fading out. Its main aim is to communicate to visitors the germ of a self discovery of space consciousness.

Technical descripction. The projection dimensions are approximately 2-3 m. height and 5,5-8 m. width -depending on space needs-, a two projectors horizontal composition. A little digital video videorecorder -as a webcam- must be set up in a way it can record the visitors' movement in front of the projection. The two projectors and the cam are plugged to a hidden computer that calculates and generates each projection frame in real time.

The software used to generate the projection and its visual interaction is Processing. Computation of the visitors' movement from the cam images is done by the software Pure Data. With these movement data, the computer changes the invisible circles' position and calculates their intersections, which are projected. The lines representations include a smooth luminosity diffusion which creates the illusion of transforming them into luminescent objects.

In its conception as an intervention in public spaces to be experimented and observed, Perspective (I) works in three different dimensions: symbolic, architectural and the one relating to community.

Symbolic. Erwin Panovsky defined and used the concept of perspective intuition, which is the mental platform where space references are projected and ordered into our thought. Perspective (I) looks for the dialectical, permanently reconstructed and generated origin of this intuition. A dialog which takes place in each of the individual's present, which is harmonized by the always unexpected experience of reality and which is hold, especially, with the illusions coming from the senses, the memory or the learned or symbolically acquired references.

The installation considers the problem of the origin of the perspective intuition to build, from the machine, an objective generation of illusions. The visitor, interacting with the illusions, becomes aware of his own movement and is then able to intuit the historical character of his own dialog with his outside (nature, building) in order to rediscover his capacity to modify the perceivable. This dialectical and sensorial origin and this historicity of intuition redefine a common narrative field of art & science: the capacity of dialectical transformation of individual's perception. The installation's main aim is this individual's generic ability to transform itself.

Architectural. The projection of Perspective (I) in a space transforms the installation into an additional architectural element and, due to its nature, an element of the media-architecture. As it is computationally designed to react to movement, the perfect spaces to establish the interaction are those ones conceived to be crossed, that is, a corridor, an access, a hub.

In this architectural dimension, the installation opens to perception a new state of space, the virtual one, while the real one is being crossed. This virtual space is the informational and relational space, where code is the concept indexing, classifying and spatializing knowledge and its exchanges. Perspective (I) is built from the thesis that both conceptions of space share the same origin: movement or its potence. As an illusion, as an attraction to perspective intuition, the spatial nature of every computation is staged. In short, the projected becomes space in the same sense that the spatial becomes projected in the illusion of perception.

Communal. This proposed dialog between experience and intuition, between real and media architecture is transfered to the participant community as an interdisciplinar dialog proposal. In this case, a dialog between art and science around a central issue in both cultures: perspective.

Architecturally and symbolically, a virtual and possibility space is projected in a potential-movement place. There, Perspective (I) presents also this informational space as a common opportunity to science and art creation. The installation, consequently, acts as a dialog proposal for actors and creators in both of these communities.