Wave Painter
2011
A live painting system that prioritizes continuous action over resolution, keeping form in perpetual flux rather than equilibrium.
Wave Painter is a live interactive painting installation that treats painting as a continuous process rather than a means toward a finished image. Using motion tracking and video feedback, the system produces a responsive field of color and light that remains in constant flux, evolving in real time in response to bodily movement.
Rather than employing single-color marks or static brushes, Wave Painter uses full-color, volumetric image fragments as its fundamental painting units. Gesture operates on these composite forms directly, allowing image-making to occur through the manipulation of already complex visual matter rather than through additive mark placement.
Instead of stabilizing marks once input ceases, the painted field continues to drift, blur, and transform even in the absence of interaction. Gesture initiates change but does not complete it, positioning the participant as a modulator of an ongoing system rather than an author of discrete forms.
By refusing equilibrium, Wave Painter reframes painting as a temporal activity without endpoint, closer to performance than image-making. The work emphasizes sustained engagement over accumulation, allowing form to persist as behavior rather than artifact.
