At Artissima, the international fair of contemporary art in Torino, visitors are able to use simple hand and arm gestures to browse a visual catalogue of recent art work exhibited at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, an important museum in the city.

The technology is based on sophisticated gesture recognition, while the end-result for the visitor is a radically simple content navigation system in which the images are projected on a large screen, and interaction is performed via nothing but a flat luminous surface.

The project was developed by Jan-Christoph Zoels, Yaniv Steiner and Ofer Luft of Experientia, an international experience design consultancy based in Torino.

A prototype of the gesture-based interface was previously used to navigate Google Earth and to guide club dancing during a music rave. The various interfaces are all based on the smartRetina™ technology, which provides the designer with a programmable “eye”, allowing him to easily design new experiences and interactions which do not require a tangible interface.

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“In their efforts to compete with other and more dynamic providers of information and entertainment, many museums are listening to their visitors more closely than ever before,” writes Jennifer Kabat in a long story on the website of the Adobe Design Center.

“In some cases museums—famously top-down institutions—are even incorporating the views, critical choices and contributed content of visitors into their programs. They are also re-examining the ways in which visitors interact with objects and spaces, as well as each other. For help with both of these approaches they are turning to a growing sector of the interactive design world; one that specializes in interactive museum displays.”

“Thus, the best interactive exhibits are open-ended. They encourage visitors to be active participants in the experience rather than passive consumers of information. They take their visitors’ views seriously and break down the hierarchy of institutions.”

Acknowledging the debate (”The idea of the audience taking control sends shivers down many a curator’s spine”), Kabat provides some very good examples of thoughtful integration of user-generated content in museum and exhibition contexts.

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This project by Electroland consists of a luminous field of LED lights embedded into the entry walkway that respond to the presence of visitors; a massive display of lights on the building face that mirror the patterns of the entry; and video displays in the lobby and entry areas.



Environmental intelligence and surveillance of human activity are combined with a video-game sensibility. Activities on the walkway also trigger massive light displays on the building face. When the walkway interactivity is triggered users witness their impact on the building face via a video display. Response is instantaneous.

(via we-make-money-not-art and Interactive Architecture)

This project by Electroland features two glass pedestrian bridges designed as “Interactive Walkways,” each with a field of LED lights embedded in resilient walking surfaces. Sensors detect the presence of people and the system triggers interactive light patterns on the walkway floor.



(via we-make-money-not-art and Interactive Architecture)

“>Nanoscape by artists and researchers Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau is an invisible sculpture that can be sensed via touch.

Users wear magnetic ring-interfaces and when moving the hand over the table of the installation, strong magnetic forces, repulsion, attraction and even slight shock can be felt.

Wireless magnetic force-feedback interface allows users to touch invisible nano particles, thus creating an changing invisible sculpture which modifies its shape and properties as users interact with it and with each other.

(via we-make-money-not-art)

Bitfall is an installation by Julius Popp where water is being used to project images taken from the internet. A computer observes various news websites and chooses thereafter the images to be displayed. 128 nozzles are controlled by synchronised magnetic valves, and the water drops falling to the ground shape the images. The visual information is only tangible for a second before the drops merge to become water again.



(via Interactive Architecture)

This project by Kellee Santiago (founder of thatgamecompany) allows you to control the character using your body. Tilt your arms to turn and raise them to go faster or lower to slow down. It uses the PhaseSpace motion capture set-up, essentially cameras tracking LEDs on the wearers body. It’s great that the player in the photos is wearing a pijama outfit (like the boy in the game) and I think this system would work best in the free flight mode (which is lots of fun). In Cloud though there are many actions, such as pulling the clouds around or absorbing/releasing them, which is hard to build into a motion capture. This game would work perfectly on Wii though, so get in touch Nintendo!

(via pixelsumo)

tabulaTouch can sense multiple points of contact on surfaces of different shape and size, where gestures can be recognized and become expressive actions.

The first case of study has been tabulaMaps, an application for the collaborative management of digital maps that features the intuitive roto-translation approach; we are planning to integrate it with GIS products.

(via onTheTableTop)

Mind Your Head by Philip Marston is a simple and playful installed object which the viewer/participator (by wearing the headphones and walking under and around the suspended light) can audibly experience the invisible electromagnetic frequencies which leak and radiate out of an ordinary fluorescent tube light.

The headphones, with an EMF (electromagnetic frequency) pick-up attached, provide a new form of intimate but unnerving physical interaction with an overlooked mundane object, which hopefully highlights our every increasing environmental exposure to man-made electromagnetic fields.

(via pixelsumo)

Sensing GamePad: Electrostatic Potential Sensing for Enhancing Entertainment Oriented Interactions

This project by Dr. Jun Rekimoto, director of Sony’s Interaction Laboratory, introduces a novel way to enhance input devices to sense a user’s foot motion. By measuring the electrostatic potential of a user, this device can sense the user’s footsteps and jumps without requiring any external sensors such as a floor mat or sensors embedded in shoes. We apply this sensing principle to the gamepad to explore a new class of game interactions that combine the player’s physical motion with gamepad manipulations. We are also investigating other possible input devices that can be enhanced by the proposed sensing architecture such as a portable music player that can sense foot motion through the headphone and musical instruments that can be affected by the players’ motion.

The Hidden Worlds of Noise and Voice is an interactive audiovisual installation, or, alternatively, an augmented-reality speech-visualisation system.

It has been developed by Golan Levin and Zachary Lieberman in collaboration with the Ars Electronica Futurelab in Linz, Austria.

Its central theme is the magical relationship of speech to the ethereal medium which conveys it.

Participants in Hidden Worlds are able to “see” each others’ voices, which are made visible in the form of animated graphic figurations that appear to emerge from the participants’ mouths while they speak. In the installation, visitors wear special see-through data glasses, which register and superimpose 3D graphics into the real world. When one of the users speaks or sings, colorful abstract forms appear to emerge from his or her mouth. The graphics representing these utterances assume a wide variety of shapes and behaviors that are tightly coupled to the unique qualities of the vocalist’s volume, pitch and timbre.

(via Interactive Architecture)

With Invisible - The Shadow Chaser, players have to sense and capture “ghosts” with a vacuum cleaner. “Invisible” goblins sneak around, but you can only see their shadows.
The system, developed by the Nara Institute of Science and Technology, allows “hunters” to feel the presence of 3D virtual objects using only indirect information such as the shadows and sounds of goblins instead of direct images.

When the goblins move, players can hear their footsteps. The volume of the sound changes depending on the goblins’ position on the floor. When players capture goblins, they hear the goblins’ scream and vacuuming sounds.

Players can also get a haptic sense of capture. When they catch a goblin, small motors in the hose of the device vibrate sequentially from the nozzle toward the handle. Then a large vibrating motor in the backpack presents a sense that the captured goblin is struggling. At the same time, water is moved from a tank on the ground to another in the backpack, so players feel the weight of the captured goblins.

(via we-make-money-not-art)

Players equipped with a wearable computer, headset and goggles can physically enter a real world game space by choosing to play the role of Pacman or one of the Ghosts.

A central computer system keeps track of all their movements with the aid of GPS receivers and a wireless local area network.

The Human Pacman was developed by Adrian David Cheok and his team at the Mixed Reality Lab, National University of Singapore.

Merging different technologies such as GPS, Bluetooth, virtual reality, wi-fi, infrared and sensing mechanisms, the augmented reality game allows gamers to play in a digitally-enhanced maze-like version of the real world.

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The interactive Tintoretto installation by Christian Möller and Marizio Seracini visualises the hidden layers of well-known paintings, using X-ray and infrared technology, for example the preliminary drawings, the priming and any areas which may have been painted over.

This visualisation system appears to the viewer as a virtual replica. It allows the viewer to wipe away each respective foreground by touching the surface of the picture. It is up to the individual to erase their way through the picture layer by layer.

In this way, the observer is able to navigate through the third dimension of the painting and discover a unique image anatomy from an important work of art from the 16th century.

Interactive painting in The Bridge, Museum of Contemporary Art, New Orleans/USA 1996

HMC MediaLab’s Adam Montandon created Hyperfabric, a fabric-based interface that lets you reach beyond the screen. This “touchable” touchscreen, made out of an elastic latex-like fabric warps like rubber, and can sense how hard your press it, where you press it, even when several people use it at once. It feels like you are going “through” the screen.

(via we-make-money-not-art)