Few months ago Flightphase were brought to this project by HUSH Studios as an Art and Technology Director to create, in collaboration with HUSH and 160over90, the image-based responsive environment at the University of Dayton. The 36-foot wall at the admissions center was to become an interactive attractor for the prospective students and their families. The result is an engaging live surface driven by simple elements beautifully choreographed.

The project evolved from a basic element, the cube, used as a mechanism to both animate the screen and show videos. Cube, also being the visual language of UD cubes were used in their orthographic projections, no camera, no lighting, and frequently rendering one of the faces of the cubes with the same color as the background. Each face of each cube is rendered with a single color, but this color changes depending on the faces’s angle to the camera. The color is picked from pre-designed image gradient that constitutes a palette. Altogether, the entire field of cubes, with how they overlap and with the negative-space shapes formed between the cubes, created an opportunity to create a variety of looks and patterns giving more more structural and dimensional appearance that could ‘open up’, rather than just being on the surface of the wall.

The fields of cubes were then animated with waves of activity. The designed Affectors start small and grow to their final size as they travel around. The longer the cube has been under the effect of the Affector, the more it is influenced by it. The gestural interaction is driven by 4 Kinect cameras, embedded in the ceiling in front of the wall providing viewer’s presence and movement.

The software was built using openFrameworks. For video tracking the team used a modified version of TSPS (Toolkit for Tracking People in Spaces). 2 Mac Minis were used to get input from the Kinect cameras — each Mac Mini running the TSPS app blending the input from two Kinects, and sending the contour information over to the Mac tower.

More details about the process with great insight into resolving both mapping and blending is available in the form of a case study on Flightphase’s website.

Client: University of Dayton, Agency: 160over90, Production Company: HUSH, Art & Technology Director: Flightphase

FLightphase credits: Creative Direction, Interaction Design, Bespoke Software Design

Creative Direction/Design: Karolina Sobecka, Technical Direction: James George, Jeff Crouse, Lead Sofware Development: Jeff Crouse, Additional Software Development: Caleb Johnston

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Flightphase is an art and design studio based in Brooklyn. We are dedicated to creating work that is engaging and evocative, creating a unique design and format solution for any challenge. We develop a variety of art and commercial projects, embracing emerging technologies, interactivity and new media as well as all the traditional tools of creative expression from pencils to film to product design.

Via : Creative Applications Network ☞ LINK