Trees
Trees is an interactive installation that lets viewers become the wind as they interact with a tree living within virtual space. Trees is an exploration in the interface between alternate worlds: the physical and the virtual.
Trees visualizes a simple world containing a dynamic tree like form in an alien landscape. The system uses data from a Kinect depth sensor to allow participants to interface with the alien world inside. The system uses the movement and spatial information of participants to effect the movement of the tree. Participants at first have subtle effects on a virtual wind field which pushes the tree into a swaying dance and can be heard as wind like breaths in the space. As time cycles, participants will start to have a much greater effect on the tree, eventually morphing the tree's geometry in bizarre non-ordinary ways.
There is a flexibility in virtual space; it is possible to break the rules and rapidly explore the space of virtual life that make forms and motions unique from those in reality. How do we link ordinary reality to the virtual in order to open a channel for the communication of ideas and forms between the two? Is it possible that exploring a virtual world with our physical bodies could make our reality more alive..more real?
Installation
MAT End of Year Show, "Shadows in Space", May 23rd, 2013.
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