Everything is connected, says Andrew Schembri – who, together with Toni Gialanze makes up the Late Interactive duo – as he explains to Ramona Depares how their upcoming interactive installation Iddi works.

Interactive art installations are still something of a new thing for Malta – well, for most countries, if we are to be honest. Until Andrew Schembri and Toni Gialanze – better known as the duo Late Interactive – emerged on the scene during the last edition of Science in the City.

It was during the festival that their first interactive installation as a collaboration left its mark. Called Brainrave, the installation saw visitors donning an EEG headset that translated brain waves into music. The music generated by participants was in turn accompanied by visuals generated onto over 3,000 LED lights in real time.

Because audience participation and audience influence is at the heart of what Schembri and Gialanze do. In fact, asked to explain their art form, this is the first thing Schembri picks on – this interaction that enables the user to influence the end result of the installation.

Which is exactly what is being planned for Iddi, another Late Interactive project that is part of the upcoming Malta Arts Festival.

“Iddi will see the steps near the new Parliament building, to your left as you’re walking into Valletta, transformed into a mass of moving people and dancing lights,” Schembri starts off.

The duo has certainly evolved since that first Science in the City project, with Schembri’s and Gialanze’s work taking a stronger leap into the public consciousness thanks to works showcased during the now-iconic Pudina rave party and also during live gigs by Maltese bands Plato’s Dream Machine and Brikkuni. Schembri explains that it was their experience during Pudina that they were inspired to take the collaboration to the next level.

“I don’t think anyone had expec­ted us to go to those lengths, to be honest. The party-goers’ reactions were very encouraging, so, of course, we were motivated to continue taking things even more seriously. In fact, both Plato’s Dream Machine and Brikkuni had initially asked us to do stage design, and then we expanded on that,” he says.

Toni Gialanze (left) Andrew Schembri.

Their endgame, Schembri says, is the creation of ‘interactive art’, however he acknowledges that it is essential for them to gain exposure outside of the obvious arts scene, which he describes as their comfort zone.

“We are trying to also work within the commercial arena, which is more testing but also neces­sary. Luckily, we are now in a position to refuse those jobs that really offer no creative aspect – for example, we are quite often asked to rent out our equipment, but we’re not interested in jobs that only offer that.”

So what, exactly, is an interactive installation. It’s all very well to say that it’s an artistic work that allows the audience to interact with it – but how does this happen? Not an easy question to answer, especially to someone like me, who is not technologically-minded – but Schembri does his best to offer a step-by-step reply and he does kind of succeed.

“The basic identity of the project is the interaction aspect. People need to feel they are controlling the installation, making a difference. If done well, an interactive installation makes people modify their behaviour,” he tell me.

To explain better, he uses the upcoming Iddi as example. The installation’s mechanism sees visitors moving on the stairs. Their movement will trigger a visual installation on LEDs that keeps changing according to their movement.

“As soon as people figure this out, they will start behaving accordingly in order to see the changes reflected on the continuously-changing lights,” Schembri says.

In fact, he adds, these type of installations trigger users to modi­fy their behaviour in what he des­cribes as a “feedback loop”.

“It’s based on a reward system. The more the behaviour chan­ges, the more the participant is rewarded.”

The process to achieve this end game is not a simple one. It starts with identifying the equipment needed – equipment that is expensive, needs to be imported and tends to become obsolete very fast.

Then comes the planning stage, when Schembri and Gialanze ensure the installation is accessible to everyone. The rule of thumb is that it needs to be able to be ex­plained in two sentences. Anything more complex, that require specific movements by participants for example, tends to not work.

Budgeting is another important stage: “We need to make something look expensive, without it being actually that expensive; it’s also important to remember that good equipment does not replace knowledge and talent.”

Happily, the latter two issues are not something Late Interactive has to deal with, if the duo’s previous work is anything to go by. And after Iddi is over, preparations are already under way for a Malta Arts Fund supported pro­ject that will be part of the next edition of Science in the City.

Iddi takes place from June 30 to July 16 between 7 and 11pm every day on the stairs next to the new Parliament building, Valletta.

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