Project
BREAKPOINT
Tools
Kinetic Sculpture
TouchDesigner
Arduino
Projection Mapping
Real-time Interaction
Description
BREAKPOINT is an interactive installation that examines the illusion of life in non-living structures, and the human impulse to control what appears to respond. A wireframe horse operates as a responsive system, where perception shifts through touch, proximity, and force.
Overview
BREAKPOINT is an interactive installation that explores the illusion of animacy and the human desire to control what appears to be alive. Through a suspended wire horse, the work constructs a space in which touch, movement, and projection create the unstable perception that life is emerging from a non-living form.
As the audience interacts, the work moves between two conditions: coexistence and domination. Gentle contact produces a responsive and continuous visual flow, while pulling the rein transforms the interaction into force, rupture, and confrontation.
By combining kinetic structure, Arduino, TouchDesigner, and real-time projection, BREAKPOINT examines how easily humans project intention onto silence, and how quickly curiosity can become possession, force, or even cruelty when consequences appear absent. The work invites reflection on where life begins, where responsibility begins, and what is revealed about ourselves when something we try to control seems to look back.
Fabrication
The structure was developed without a fixed blueprint. Form emerged through an iterative process, allowing material behavior to determine proportion and scale.
The horse is constructed as a modular system, segmented into multiple components for assembly and reconfiguration.
The decision to maintain a life-scale presence and suspend the structure redefines its spatial condition, shifting it from object to environment.
Interaction
Capacitive sensing distributes input across the structure, registering touch as continuous variation.
The rein isolates force as a distinct input. Pressure data introduces a second condition, separating contact from control.
The system transitions through states of continuity, resistance, and separation.
Mapping
Input data is translated into visual behavior through a real-time system in TouchDesigner.
A project by Channing(Qian) Mu and @Emily(Jialu) Xu
Special Thanks to @bolong_xi, @_tofusenpai, @ohitwasleo