‘Hurry Up Please : IT’S TIME’ offers an expansion on the drinker’s eternal concern for questions of time (that pressing pint; the tyranny of Last Orders). A camera above the bar scans it for activity. Computer vision compares pixels adjacent in time and calculates the geography of activity. A co-located overhead projection then remaps the scene with abstracted, responsive imagery, conjuring a composite temporal image. Active drinkers are rewarded with faster imagery, updating in real-time, whilst inactive parts of the bar and screen slumber in archival mode, dormant until activity is intense enough to accelerate playback into real-time. Boozers, bingers and barflys collaborate to produce a 4-dimensional document of space and time.
This project was a collaboration with Alex Haw (Atmos) and was installed at two London pubs as part of the Node.London Spring ’08 Events.