» Visiophone, Kinect dancing with swarming particles

Visiophone is Rodrigo Carvalho, a portuguese graphic designer and new media artist born in Porto. He studied design at University of Aveiro and he is now based in Barcelona where he studies a masters degree in digital arts at Pompeu Fabra University. 

This video is a demo of "Dancing With Swarming Particles", an interactive installation and performance that intends to explore the relationship between a physical user and an “avatar” which has the physical characteristics of morphing flocking particles.

It was made in Unity3d, using Kinect and Osceleton.

» Little Magic Stories, Chris O'shea

Chris O'shea is a British artist and designer. He is focused on human behavior and engagement through interaction design and the visual arts. His works and collaborations have been commissioned by the BBC, FACT, Design Museum London and Science Gallery Dublin, and shown by British Council Japan and Kinetica Art Fair. He is on the executive committee of charity Action for Children’s Arts, which campaigns for the right of all children in the UK to have high quality arts experiences as an integral part of their childhood. His vision is to give these experiences not just to visitors of museums & galleries, but also to the hard to reach, through hospitals, sensory rooms, schools, play centres and public spaces.

Little Magic Stories is his latest project, with aim to encourage children to use their creativity to bring stories to life. The installation allows them to create a performance from within their imagination, on stage, in front of an audience of family and friends. Chris says: "I am planning to use this project in workshops with groups of children to get them excited about storytelling. They will be able to use the system to create their own narratives, as well as drawing the content by hand, before performing to their friends. The system will have improved physics, dynamic animation of objects and scene animated sounds." Chris used the Musion Eyeliner holographic projection system for this project, allowing the graphics to appear to be alongside the performers. This uses a technique called Pepper’s ghost, and you can see the technical set-up here. An Xbox Kinect camera was also used to track the performers on stage. The software was custom written in C++ and used openFrameworks, openCV and Box2D. On Flickr: Making Of & Performance Shots.