Installation and software art

The Outhouse Storycatcher
The Outhouse Storycatcher is an interactive video booth to collect people’s stories in a playful way. People see a quirky box in the street and are attracted by its looks. This work has seen many iterations. It first started in 2009 when Brian Cohen did a residency in the remote town of Ivanhoe, in NSW, Australia. Since then, it has seen several iterations. In 2009, it won first prize at the Future Places media arts festival in Porto, Portugal.
In 2010, it was used on a research project (CAMRA- Cultural Asset Mapping in Regional Australia) by the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, to collect stories in remote towns. It proved to be more popular than a traditional questionnaire. As people felt more free to speak without a person sit-in across them. Furthermore, it was useful to attract people with limited reading skills, making it accessible.
Until 2015, it has undergone several modification and every iteration had a new design. The software was written in Max and the installation ran on a MacMini embedded in the booth. The video below shows the 2010 version at a festival in Tasmania.

Playtime #1

Playtime #1 is a patch in Max/MSP, that uses a game (Pong) also made in Max/MSP. The gaming field is divided in 16 squares, each holding a soundfile. Everytime the ball enters a square, the soundfile is played. Because the ball moves not always in the same direction, a nonlinear music is created. Also, everytime a point is scored by one of the players, a new set of soundfiles is loaded, so that there is musical variety.
As it is written a while ago, current MacOS probably will not support it anymore. But feel free to download it and experiment with it. I made the sound events all audio files rather than mididfiles, hence the relatively large file size.