Steve Cooley Fine Art

Interview of Tom Igoe:

As far as physical computing artwork that’s impressed me lately, there’s one piece that I really liked, featured at ISEA this year: Tad Hirsch‘s Tripwire. He basically made sound sensing coconuts that he hung in the trees in San Jose, and each time the noise levels from planes exceeded the acceptable maximum, the coconuts called the city’s noise abatement complaint line. He’s done a number of really smart activist works like this that use humor tactically. The other thing that impressed me about this piece was that it was the one from the festival that made the most earnest attempt to try to address a real problem of the city hosting the festival. Many of the other pieces could have been done in any city, but this one attempted to give something back to the citizens of San Jose, by drawing the attention of the city bureaucracy to something it tends to ignore. I thought that was very gracious of him.

Thanks Tom!

We have a really bad noise problem with loud vehicles late at night on the expressway near our house, this totally inspires me to copy this fine work for our neighborhood! This is one of the works that didn’t get plastered up on posters all over the city and surrounding cities, so I appreciate Tom’s attention to Tad’s work… there were so many things going on that it was impossible to pick out things like this from the rabble.