CurioCity
Brief │ The Content is the Object
Project leader │ Jozeph Forakis
Project Assistant │ Maria José Fabregat
Group Members │ Hyeon Jeong Jeon, Dimitris Perros, Jesse Weser
Idea
An ordinary public space can be used as an interpretive communication environment between anonymous individuals.
Problem setting
A public spaces not an end in itself for anonymous individuals. They just pass through the space and use that place temporarily. This project is a rediscovery of public spaces in a gaze of interactive design.
Context
Visualizations on the wall reflect each user’s gestures, rhythms, and sometimes thoughts while time and traces represent the space’s history, illustrating the overlap between past, present and future.
What is it?
In public spaces, we are just anonymous individuals sharing the same environment in a given time. However, in situation like these, everyday experiences overlap and occasions for social exchange and interaction multiply. By harnessing the focus on ordinary gestures, rhythms, and traces, unnoticed everyday phenomena could be exposed.
Layers of successive stills of present and past occurrences have the potential for highlighting unexpected connections, even among strangers: people apparently unaware of each-other yet close in space. Movements and messages will allow trailing together of sparse episodes, linked only by the same casual setting. Using time delay in visualizations, events (present/past/future) and even stories of different users can co-exist in the same moment. CurioCity will make visible these events anonymous flow, as they intertwine, surface and disappear on the backdrop of a public space.
How it works?
CurioCity is the result of an exploration for pervasive communications between anonymous people in the public space. The system includes a display screen on one large-scale wall, DVR with dome camcorder, sensors and micro controller. On the floor, the system has one sensing line to figure out the user’s participation within the space.
Whenever someone passes by this space, the system tracks his or her movements and calculates the information using time and distance. When he or she leaves the space, the system begins to display their history on the wall. The users actions, gestures, and rhythms will be displayed in a continuous loop for a predetermined (this variable is specific to the space and amount of time that each user was in the space) amount of time.
If users cross the sensing line and interact with the wall, then he or she can participate in the space immediately. When they touch the wall with their full hand, the system takes their biometric information such as a body temperature, heart rate and skin resistance. According to this information, the system assigns a specific colour to the user’s shape, which correlates to the user’s emotional status assumed from the biometric information. The system also gives the user the ability to draw on the wall using their assigned colour. The user can draw meaningful symbols, characters, objects, words, etc; something similar to “tagging” photos and blogs. After finishing the activity the user’s symbol will follow the user around the space.
Once the user has exited the area, which is to be recorded, their possessions that they drew near their shape will drop down to the bottom of the wall. Then other anonymous individuals can interact with the objects: play with them, tag them with the previous user’s history, or move it to another part of the room. This action will emphasize an overlap in ideas, memories, and/or thoughts; as well as visualize commonalities between strangers. These drawings can be a tool for sharing and overlapping memories between strangers during the past, present and future.
Value & Potential
This system can be used in many different public spaces. It can be used to create CurioCity among strangers in general places that people are waiting for something, such as a reception area or lobby. It can be used in an airport, a retail store, or in a cafeteria. This system can also be used to connect strangers in open spaces, like a park. Its applications are voluminous and adaptable to many different situations.
CurioCity is designed to make a connection between the past, present and future – without all of the participants having to be in the space at the same time. The value lies within its ability to overlap the lives of strangers and highlighting everyday phenomenon.
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