Movement Perception: An Interactive Audio-Visual Experience

Our Guest Blogger, Lily Chaos, is a freelance writer, editor and (sometime) information designer. She enjoys daydreaming and discovering cool interactive websites on her downtime, and occasionally spams her friends with her discoveries -- her friends have told her to get a blog. She wanted to share some of her findings with the readers (new victims!) of InventorSpot.com.

Here's her article:

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A new video art installation by Russian media artist Sergey Kotsun invites the viewer to become the author and main character of an interactive audio-visual performance.

How does it work?

The viewer's image is captured via a webcam and thrown up onto a projection screen. On the screen, two lines of transparent square boxes are also displayed, with the lines approaching each other at the top and veering away at the bottom, almost forming two sides of a triangle. Inside the boxes are different geometrical shapes.

As the viewer waves or makes other motions that can be picked up by the webcam, a computer program analyzes those movements. Any time a movement is perceived to intersect with one of the transparent squares, the corresponding geometrical shape displays onscreen and the sound of a musical instrument is played.

The viewer, in effect, becomes the artist as well as an integral part of the performance, creating movements that translate into sounds and abstract compositions of circles, squares, lines and half-moons. Kind of like playing an air banjo from inside a colorful kaleidoscope. Pretty trippy, huh?

Give it a whirl

You can create your own psychedelic experience with an online version of Kotsun's work, available through CYLAND Medialab's website. All you need is a webcam and sound. You can also view the installation in action, filmed during a presentation at the Gryaznaya Gallery in St. Petersburg, Russia below:

Lily Chaos
Gueat Blogger
InventorSpot.com