Mediatecture is creating space as media. From skinning forms with graphics to engineering graphic structures, mediatecture is about programming the experience of a space. Experiments with transmitting and reading messages is the key to this class as we explore and apply strategies for manipulating the physical world. We study various techniques that bring to life unique sensory experiences and dynamic messages. The class executes these projects using video projection, both to simulate any number of physical possibilities at human scale, but also to create interactive and dynamic surfaces.
Below are some of the highlights from this Spring. The most notable feature of this term was the participation of Ivan Cruz as Teachers Assistant. Ivan was able to spend countless hours of office time helping the students program their projects in processing to deliver many of the most polished final projects to date. Another notable feature this term was the release of the Kinect camera from Microsoft. To date there has never been as affordable and effective a way to do high speed and fault tolerant vision projects. I encourage you to click on the video links for each project to get a sense of the real magic behind this work.
Seunga Lee created an intriguing clock, designed to fill a dark corridor with light and to illustrate the suns position. The project was based on triangulated geometry and it’s relationship to the underlying measurements of the sun, both time and light. This time lapse video of The Sun In The Dark depicts the experience.
The Space Between Us, created by James King and developed from the concept of Proxemics was perhaps the best conceived to take advantage of the choice hardware package from this term, (projector, computer and kinect camera.) James quickly recognized that this combo could easily deliver measurements of distances and project those on the ground, inviting a fun design challenge of translating those values into graphic systems.
An excellent project by Adam Lopez set out to transform the LED message board in the cafeteria into something that can communicate useful information and also attract people’s participation. Adam not only created an entertaining multiplayer etch-a-sketch system which also displayed a twitter feed anyone can post to and useful information, but he also created an excellent educational video about the project here: mediatecture – etch-a-sketch project.
Return by Jason Yeh was an intriguing video feedback loop inspired by the Allegory of the Cave. Jason placed a camera opposite a video projector with a screen hanging in the middle. People’s silhouettes would build up over time and be flipped right to left, allowing you to interact with yourself.
Q’s Guided by Spirits used a lantern that with the aid of video projectors attempts to create a link to the spirit world.
Micael Klok created The Abraham Experience, a simulation of his cat which interacted with visitors of his graduation presentation. Unfortunately the current video only depicts abraham walking but in it’s final execution the simulated cat was able to walk to the nearest person and occasionally lick his paw.
by Oliver Hess | filed Outside, Technology