Interspatial: A Multi-touch Installation

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Please enjoy some production video and images from my (and Kyle Hood's) multi-touch driven animation installation recently shown at the Zoller Gallery at Penn State. The gallery show, called "Ligature," included work from all of the first-year MFA candidates from across all disciplines. My installation, Interspatial, attempted to spur discussion on technology's role within the social systems that we live in. How are we as people constrained or liberated through interfacing with these systems, and how can critical analysis better our understanding of how we should be influencing and be influenced by social system interfaces? The installation consisted of a multi-touch surface built from CNC milled wood, plexy glass, IR LEDs, a PlayStation Eyetoy, a projector, and a MacBook Pro.

Gestural Interaction:

Animation Stills:

Tracking System:

Here is a an initial blob-tracking test I created once the IR LED frame was contructed:

All of the gesture programming was done by Kyle Hood using MaxMSP, a visual programming language. Here is a youtube video of the tracking system with images mapped to the tracked blobs:

The following video shows the interface working with gesture recognition: