Tabula ex-cambio

Abstract

Tabula-ex-cambio is an interactive installation that delivers visual and audio content. It works as a sort of perpetual billiard game, powered by the data originating from the trend of a stock exchange index. The visual content is a real-time animated 3D computer graphics, that represents a billiard game where each ball is associated with a stock in the index. The audio content is an electroacoustic music composition featuring as many layers of sounds as stocks in the index. All the balls in the billiard are musical sources that play an iterated sequence of sounds while moving on the billiard table; each sequence is altered in frequency by the trend of the related company index. The final delivered visual and audio contents depend on the interaction with the user, who can select a view/listening point on the billiard game. The physical installation consists of a deformed billiard structure connected to a stele through cables; the stele is a vertical display where the billiard game takes place. The visual display relies on the graphic engine Ogre, while the aural display is implemented in SuperCollider. The installation was exposed in Shanghai, Beijing, Birmingham, and Terni (Italy).