For Mika Tajima’s You Be My Body For Me, Brooklyn Research designed the hardware components, software, and network architecture for the piece during the 2023 Art Basel exhibition. From a technical perspective each glass structure contained it’s own single board computer, wifi router, lidar sensor, and controller for the polarizing film. A mesh network was implemented so that each unit could talk to each other. This was in effort to make the communication between units more robust, allow far flung units to be able to talk to each other, and deal with low radio signal strength during the installation. The Lidar sensors were used to accurately track user approaching any of the units, and properly trigger the animation sequence for the polarizing film.
As per Art Basel’s website:
In Mika Tajima’s You Be My Body for Me, architectural configurations of freestanding panes of ‘smart glass’ surround and partially conceal a group of rose quartz sculptures. Stand-ins for figures, the sculptures titled Pranayama refer to the ancient practice of connecting the mind and body through the breath. The glass panes – which change opacity through electric charges in its surface – are activated by the presence of a viewer that is then mediated through an algorithm mapping connections in social media feeds. In social media, the body is already elsewhere and nowhere: a substitute, outside of itself, evacuated, altered, enhanced, and illusory. Here the body is elucidated through translucent reflections, humankind is placed in relationship to others and connected by unimaginable forms.