Medialab-Matadero Madrid
Interactivos? Birmingham: Responsive and immersive future technologies. Selected Projects
> 360º Pinhole Matchbox Camera
> Heart Dialogue
> Musical Suit
> 040912: It's Raining Data
> Underground Communicators
> A mixed reality environment for live Interactive presentation and performance
> Forgot Your Password?
360º Pinhole Matchbox Camera
By Rafael Fernandes de Carvalho and Gustavo Oliveira Fernandes (Brasil)
A pinhole camera is a simple camera without a lens and with a single small aperture, a pinhole. Effectively a light-proof box with a small hole in one side. Light from a scene passes through this single point and projects an inverted image on the opposite side of the box. And this light proof box may well be a matchbox.
The "360 Matchbox Pinhole Camera" project unites the ancient technique of pinhole photography to studies of new technologies using Arduino.
The idea is to mount a panoramic camera using circularly arranged pinhole cameras. The micro-controller Arduino will serve to control the exposure time of the film in the cameras. Various visual effects can be achieved through different orders of exposure.
[contact with this project in the Community]
Heart Dialogue
By Anaisa Franco (Germany)
Heart dialogue is a sensitive object that follows the heart beating of the person who places its finger on it. The piece aims to bring closer the heart beating to the user. Our heart is beating 24 hours a day and is what make us alive. The piece is a way to materialize and bring to life this simple but indispensable life pulse.
[contact with this project in the Community]
Musical Suit
By Javier Cruz (Brazil)
With this project I propose to grab the music and rhythm from common and spontaneous everyday movements and turn them into a personal ludic experience. Through the use of technological tools, that will help us to live new experiences using simple body movements as the basic elements in the creation process.
This project aims to develop a tool for people to discover new sounds and rhythm hidden in their routinary actions. The public will engage with this project, because it is based on the most basic element of human activities, the movement. I want to give a voice to these movements, give them a sound, to hear, for example, our walk, our run, or our dance.
We all have played (most probable during our childhood) some kind of rhythm game, as to try to synchronise the steps while walking with someone, or trying not to step on the lines of the sidewalk, etc. Well, we can think about this project as an extension of these games, discovering new ways to interact with ourselves.
[contact with this project in the Community]
040912: It's Raining Data
By Juan Cedenilla and Alberto Rivero (Spain)
There are clouds. It rains, the rivers appear. Those lead to the sea..
Water evaporates, elevates and becomes in clouds.
Today there is a cloud, a great cloud of data. It rains, ...
Nowdays, the concepts 'cloud', 'cloud computing', 'cloud uploading', 'cloud downloading' are words or expressions very common in the pseudo-technological lingo imposed by the new technologies. People speak about 'cloud' and the data or files that form it. We upload our piece of life to the cloud, the picture of last holiday, the book we're reading, the email with some good news, that special song. But imagine the cloud is a different thing. It is hard to think of it, provide it with a physicality, materialize it.
This project is an attempt to answer this desire: bring to the physical side a digital cloud of data and files.
[contact with this project in the Community]
Underground Communicators
By Ivan Petkov Petkov (Austria)
The underground communicators are anonymous networking devices hidden in various locations throughout a city. Connected in an independent Wi-Fi network, they enable their users to leave messages, call a person if she happen to be near one of the other connected devices, create quest-like games or interactive art installations. Even anonymously surfing the internet can be possible if one of the nodes is connected to a public WLAN. The devices are powered either by solar panels mounted on trees or buildings, with the aid of manual cranks or by wind- or water turbines. They use voice-driven OS like vinux (Linux distribution mainly developed for blind people) wherein the users communicate using voice commands or small keyboard attached to it.
The general assumption that mobile technologies represent the future of communications is the basis of many new technological developments. The aim of this project is to explore another possible branch in the communication development. It would allow people who prefer not to carry always mobile devices around, or who don’t want to be continuously tracked to still have access to communications and anonymously participate in independent local networks.
[Contact with this project in the Community]
A mixed reality environment for live Interactive presentation and performance
By Cham Athwal (Birmingham, UK)
This project will act as a launchpad for artists, programmers and device builders to engage with and further enhance, a novel interactive mixed reality production system. It will bring together a multi-disciplinary team to explore and define new interaction possibilities for mixed reality systems, where the interactions can be driven by both the performer and the audience in real-time.
One key aim of this project is to extend on the current real-time interaction system developed by Birmingham City University’s Digital Media Technology Laboratory (DMT Lab). This is an ongoing programme building a new platform which offers a mixed reality virtual presentation studio allowing an actor or performer to dynamically manipulate, interact and adapt virtual scene objects in real time as if they were real-world items. Current mixed reality or augmented reality systems are usually first person based requiring the virtual objects to be realistically presented in situ for viewing and manipulation by the interacting person. However in this system the intention is to provide a presentation of the interaction of a real person (actor) with virtual objects to a remote viewer. In this way the mixed reality studio is analogous to the stage in a theatre or a traditional performance space where it is not important that the actor can see that the set is not truly real or that props are being used as long as the audience perception is not compromised. The interactive mixed reality studio thus enables actors to interact directly with virtual objects or virtual creatures to create a live presentation or show for remote viewing.
In addition to extending these direct actor manipulations, this project will explore techniques for allowing audience members, typically viewing the presentation via a screen at a remote location, to interact with the live performance and the virtual objects. It is anticipated that this interaction could be indirect by, for example, asking questions via Twitter leading to the actor carrying out different interactions or more engagingly will explore the potential for the viewer to very directly interact with the virtual objects. This interaction modality can be via mobile devices utilised to adapt, change, and manipulate a virtual object in real time during the live broadcast, allowing dynamic two way interaction between the audience members and the scene within the virtual studio.
[Contact with this project in the Community]
Forgot Your Password?
By Divya Kasturi (Stevenage, UK)
The project involves creating an installation space that would accommodate limited participants/audience allowing them to experience the intended creation. The aim is to create a unique immersive experience whereby the participants would be able to create their own avatar. Depending on their personal choice, one can create more than one avatar based on their different persona (identities). Hence, there could be an instance where one may be surrounded by different versions of themselves. These versions will be created using 3-D holographic technology depending on technological feasibility.
This experience will parallel their simultaneous existence in online (?virtual) and offline (?real) modes. The participants would be able to trigger the formation of their avatars using specific gestures, chiming with creating usernames and passwords using specific alphanumeric characters. Considering that this installation will eventually form part of a live physical dance-theatre performance using Contemporary South Asian Dance movement vocabulary ( to be premiered in Spring 2015 in the UK), we would aim to use various gestures from Bharathanatyam style of dance. This would enable the participants to appreciate the complexity of South Asian dance, also adding the fun element whilst educating them simultaneously.