Creating Large-scale Participatory Public Installations

How do you create public art and experiences that respond to people—not just one person, but many, all at once? Artists, technologists, and Clark University alumni Lorne Covington and Bill Saiff of NOIRFLUX will share how they design large-scale interactive environments where curious—but non-specialist—audiences become participants. Their work blends readily available technologies with their own custom-built tools to create installations that can sense, respond to, and engage any number of people in real time. In this talk, Covington and Saiff will describe how they use design methods that focus on the participants’ experiences to make intuitive, engaging, and rewarding installations. They will show examples across art, education, research, and entertainment, and will invite the audience to join in and interact with some of their work firsthand. Covington and Saiff’s creative journey began in the late 1970s, experimenting with Clark University’s PDP-11/70 computer in the Goddard Library basement. By the early 1980s, they were already designing some of the world’s first interactive video systems and applications. While their professional careers took them down separate paths—Lorne as a filmmaker, technologist, and creative innovator, and Bill as a leader in user experience (UX) research and design—they remained collaborators, continually refining their shared vision of how people engage with technology. Since founding NOIRFLUX in 2011, they have combined Lorne’s expertise in interactive media and sensing technologies with Bill’s decades of UX leadership to create installations that transform spectators into collective participants through interaction, exploration, and play. Admission is free and open to the public.

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