For the COFA end-of-year exhibition in late 2003, I set up an interactive installation that combined many of the skills I had learned during my time at COFA.

above: The Digital Bonsai installation.

I built a special floor sensor that could track where people were standing on it, and programmed a microcontroller to send the sensor data to a PC running a Shockwave program that would create graphics in response to these movements. A digital projector then projected these graphics onto the floor around where people stood or walked.
A simplified version of this Shockwave is shown below, move your mouse over the black area to guide the growth of the plants.

The Japanese flute music was provided by a flute-playing friend. The music samples are divided into fast and slow sections, and selected in response to user activity. When the room is empty, the slowest music plays, becoming faster and more urgent as people step on the floor sensor.

The plants make use of a genetic algorithm, with each branch having attributes that determine size, colour and flower type. By choosing to walk in the direction of a certain branch, the user can affect the evolution of the plant.