5/2019 - 9/2019
(Excluding Summer)
The Lurian Cube
Engine/Software
Languages
Roles
Notable Features Worked On
: Processing
: Java
: Kinect Programmer
: Reading, Validating, Parsing Kinect Input
About
As part of our fourth module in CreaTe, we had to create an art installation for GOGBOT with the theme "Bio The New Digital". Together in a team of 6, we created The Lurian Cube. The premise behind this is a machine tricking users into giving up their biological data by having users interact with it. This is presented as capturing the user's movements and reflecting it on the screen. At first, the interaction is playful, but over time, the machine becomes more hostile until eventually, the user is overwhelmed with a spectacle of lights and sounds, at which the point the machine has succesfully captured the user's data. The message behind this installation was to make users think about how much of their own data and information they unknowingly give away online and how little control we can have over it.
The Lurian Cube would win the 100% FAT CreaTe Award and be featured on an article on RTV Oost. For winning the 100% FAT CreaTe Award, we would also be invited to create an installation for TECART 2020 in Rotterdam, along with a prize money to help us accomplish this endeavour.
For this installation, I was responsible for capturing users' movements and actions with the Kinect through Processing. This was done through the KinectPV2 library, which allowed me to track users' joints and skeletons, and how far from the Kinect they are. Even with the library, I encountered many problems with the reliability of tracking users. Problems such as validating if a skeleton is valid, ensuring it can handle more than 1 user interacting with it, and gracefully handling cases where the skeleton can glitch out due to specific movements and placements of a user's joints had to be solved.