For the end of term project fair I set up some of my collaborative control experiments which use the Kinect to track 2 or more people at once.

I am keen to start building more physical outputs for collaborative control, rather than only showing the output on a TV screen. This seemed to be a popular idea and people had a number of suggestions around it and I had a lot of conversations about the possibilities of this kind of system

Space

The kinect tends to encourage a certain type of behaviour. When people see themselves as a representation on screen, many perform very similar movements, such as making themselves very large and waving their arms, or making themselves very small. This experimentation is fun for participants, but it would be more interesting to have an immersive, 360^o experience.

This led to thinking about designing a space which would be influenced by the movements and behaviour of participants. One person also suggested flipping this, and seeing how changing the features of the space would alter behaviour.

Altering the space based on movement is an interesting avenue to explore. The space could change quickly, making it clear to participants what effect their behaviour has. Alternatively it could change slowly, with the behaviour of the space developing over time to reflect the behaviour of participants and gradually build up a certain type of atmosphere.

 

Object

I also discussed the idea of creating a physical object whose movements are controlled by participants.

Random International’s project, Study for Fifteen Points is a great example of how a body’s movements can be represented with only a few simple points. Combining two participant’s movements into one sculpture like this would be an interesting development.

The sculpture could also be a lot more abstracted. This idea led to a discussion about whether participants could learn to control a sculpture’s movements or behaviour even if it was very abstracted from their own movements.

 

Interaction

At the core of everything I have explored this term is interaction and connection. My goal is for people to interact with each other – facilitated through interaction with a machine.

In one project faire discussion, we talked about the potential outcomes of seeding these interactions in daily life. I would love this kind of work to be installed in places like train stations, providing a way for strangers to interact with each other. Could these interactions help to engender a feeling of connection in society?