Paper Lights
“Paper Lights” is an interactive system, enabling the creation of public exhibition-spaces where the public can interact and play with visuals over sections of large buildings
Imagine yourself walking back home from work, you are in Milan, a city of great baroque cathedrals. At some point you notice something very strange - on the face of the great cathedral a text is showing, gleaming white: “Santa Claus doesn’t have sex”. As your brain tries to bend this visual into sense the text changes to “Berlusconi doesn’t pay taxes” and before you know it - changes again to an image of a mermaid captioned: “Have you ever touched the sea floor?” (In Italian it also means “Have you ever had a stroke of bad luck?”)
Wondering what this is all about, you move forward to the great square of the cathedral to investigate some more. All the while images are flipping and turning, creating more strange and odd sentences. When you finally arrive, standing in the piazza at the foot of the cathedral, you see people holding rectangular paper objects. The objects are very similar to old vinyl covers. As they point them to the building - snippets of text and visuals seem to change over the face of the cathedral. While the people moves left and right, up and down, the visuals and text moves with them. With deeper examination, you also notice that while turning the paper objects, one can select different snippets of text and visuals, thus creating near infinite combination of odd sentences and shocking visuals, visible for miles around in the urban landscape.
How does it work?
“Paper Lights” combines two systems, one is reacTIVision - a computer vision software able to “see” a special black and white physical shape (AKA “Fiducial”) and detect its name (id), position and rotation in relation to the camera’s point of view. The other system is digital graffiti (Diffiti), designed to project computer generated visuals on the faces of buildings using a strong projector. This technique is also known as “projection-bombing”. Another unit of code called “rapid observer” act as glue, and combines the former couple of systems into a platform made in Adobe Flash. This platform allows easy and rapid manipulation of visual and behaviors.
In the above scenario, each Fiducial contains 4 visuals, mapped to its four corners. For example, “Santa Claus”, “Berlusconi”, “Cicciolina” and “Veltroni” (the last is an Italian left-wing candidate).
Another Fiducial represent the text mapped in the same way. This other Fiducial invoke snippets of text such as “Doesn’t exist” , “Doesn’t have sex” , “Doesn’t pay taxes” , “Will never win”
While two people holding each of the above Faducials in front of a building, a hidden camera detect the both Fiducial, and generate the corresponding visuals on the face of the building. People holding Fiducials can now explore and control parts of the visuals. This allows an ever growing digital dialog between people as they change and move the visuals around. That said, the system contains many Fiducials with different content attached to each one, facilitating nearly infinite odd combinations and playful possibilities.
The idea and exhibition space was developed and produced in NABA Academy - Nuova Accademia Di Belle Arti, Milan Italy.
Participants:
Student list:
Under the supervision of Stefano Mirti, Yaniv Steiner and Marco Mion
