Potato Interactive Installation

Potato Interactive Installation from Mateusz Król on Vimeo.

Potato is an interactive projection consisting of five potatoes. Touching potatoes activates images and sounds. It is a VJ setup in which these vegetables act as a midi controller or a mouse.
Organic objects such as fruits and vegetables have the ability to conduct electricity, so they can be used as capacitive sensors. When we touch such a sensor, our body provides an additional surface on which the electric charge can spread and the capacitance that can be read increases. The touch sensors in our phones work in a similar way. The work poses a question about the sense of using a cold, smooth, uniform surface to communicate with a computer, when we could use a rough, soft, uneven, diverse surface similar to, for example, vegetables. Wouldn't touch communication be easier if our fingers could get more touching feedback?
The potato has a great value in Polish culture. King Jan III Sobieski brought potatoes from Vienna as a gift for Queen Marysieńka, so that she could admire their beautiful flowers. The greatest Polish poets, such as Adam Mickiewicz and Julian Tuwim, wrote poems about potatoes. It even has monuments in Biesiekierz and Poznań. Moreover, in 2001, the artist Julita Wójcik conducted a performance which involved peeling potatoes on the floor of Zachęta in Warsaw. It is also a vegetable that allowed Poles to survive the cruel times of war. In this work, the potato is a common, obvious object but at the same time universal that gives many possibilities. If it can be a decoration, a dish or a stamp made in art class at school, why not serve as an intermediary to communicate with the machine?