IoT and Wireless Sensor Network for Interactive Waka Structure

Partnership between technologists, engineers and artists often produces new forms of interactive and complex artworks. This paper discusses the role of a smart interactive art structure and reviews the novel ways in which it can serve the intended purpose. The interactive waka project is a multi-disciplinary project which involves in the production of an interactive six-meter-tall COR-TEN plate steel waka (traditional canoe) sculpture informed by Matauranga Maori (Maori knowledge) about the Matariki star cluster. (Pleiades). This smart interactive structure will be will be located besides the Waikato river in Hamilton, New Zealand. The waka sculpture as a smart structure serves several main interrelating purposes that are centred on its symbolic, architectonic, and interactive functions. The use of human and environmental monitoring will enable co-constitutive real-time interactions, which will themselves be performatively incorporated into the field of relations. All the information gathered from the wireless sensors will be sent to the cloud, where it will be processed to determine how the waka structure's light and sound patterns should behave. The waka structure will be self-contained in terms of power, using sustainable energy sources such as solar, and will not be active unless humans are present. Data collected through the environmental wireless sensors network will be publically available through a website, using an open-source platform and the smart interactive structure will be gifted to the City of Hamilton in New Zealand.