The guys at the Information Design Transfer Center that developed that one tool I mentioned before had developed an excellent system funded by the EU called Scalex – short for Scalable Exhibition Server – that allowed interactive content to be displayed in museums and exhibitions, but they wanted something more “spicy and provocative”.
The goal was for Information Design students to create an artistic installation in a public space, so that Scalex would gain more popularity and media hype.
Scalex allowed for virtually any digital input such as webcam, midi-keyboard, microphone, any sensory device that could capture some change in movement, light, sound, temperature etc. This info would then be fed to a remote location which would fire the appropriate response onto the local system.
The “Jumper” in this project was fired by any of two cameras located on either side of a projection plane where the interactive movie was projected on. The idea was to have these trigger cameras approximately 1m away from the screen, so the system would have enough (lag) time to prepare. The person would go by and trigger the camera which would pick color values of two reference points on the person approaching, acquiring “what this person is wearing”. These two colors and the 2 second timer would be sent to the server which would than “clothe” the “shadow” of the person passing the screen, following her/him for two steps and than doing something random, thus “separating” from the subject followed.
In the meantime, there are “Sprayer” and “Painter” figures changing the background between different advertisements. Consider blue as the first ad, then red as the second, blue as the third etc.
Should someone pass by, the painting would be paused for one instance and the whole following+random gag would happen after which the painting/spraying would continue.
In the following example you can click the red dots that simulate the trigger.
This simulation is reduced to monochromatic actors and only the right webcam trigger.
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