tracking/drawing floor

The idea for the “drawing floor” installation was based on the interest of how people move in space. It was my interest for some time now to reveal how spaces are used. But this installation brings the idea to another level. By projecting the people’s movement in space back, it becomes an interactive piece. Passing through the tracked area people will leave a trail.

Using the kinect’s depth data captured and the Tuio Library for openFrameworks I am able to make a realtime drawing interface: Your body is your pen.

Step by step I developed more and more ideas of interaction: I implemented an audio “interface”: Clap once the capturing stops, you can move through the installation, without getting drawn. Clap again and you will start the capturing again. Clap twice and all drawn elements will become invisible, clap again to reveal the truth about the space. The audio-interface is still a bit in an experimental status, it needs to be improved a lot, maybe I will also use FFT-analysis.

I also developed a graphical interface on the computer. Using this the process of drawing, not drawing and choosing the colors becomes a group experience or a surprise. You can either communicate with the person on the computer or he/she can make his/her own choices. Using the interface you can control the colors, visibility and updating of the single trails or all of them.

Developing and showing the project has been a lot of fun, so I’ll continue working on it. There are a few ideas of what can be implemented:

– FFT analysis for sound input > the sound input could therefore control more parts of the interface; once implemented I can decide which parameters should be controlled and which ones not

– different shapes > so the trail becomes more variable

– moving trails > instead of simply draw the movement I could start to give an “own live” to the trails and therefore add more surprise.

– setting up the kinect in a “normal” (non-vertical) way. I should also be able to get the right positions of the movements and could add hopping as a new way of interaction. It would also make the setting up of the installation a bit easier. But still I need to set up the projector on the ceiling.

So don’t forget: YOUR BODY IS YOUR PEN!

drawing floor documentation from suse miessner on Vimeo.

installation “in use”

screenshot GUI

the project idea was: http://susemi.fileave.com/project%20idea.pdf