Rhizome 2009: A Lovely Interactive Multi-touch App on a Flexible Lycra Screen

Loran Bey is a member of the NUI group. He created Rhizome 2009 using Unity 3D and tBeta, now know as CCV (Community Core Vision). The screen in the video is made from flexible lycra, and this provides a tangible interaction effect. The music in the background is Aphix Twin's Avril 14th.

MultiTouch Screen Lycra from Loran Bey on Vimeo.

Unity 3D is a game development tool for browser-base games, including games optimized for the iPhone. (If you visit the Unity 3D website, be sure to download their 3D web plugin and visit their relaxing on-line Tropical Paradise.)

The screen displayed in the video was inspired by the 2005 Khronos Projector installation, by Alvero Cassinelli, an assistant professor at the Ishikawa Komuro Laboratory at the University of Tokyo. Khronos is described as a "video time-warping machine with a deformable screen."

The Khronos Projector website provides several simulation applets built with Processing that you can play with. They were fun to interact with on my HP TouchSmart PC. I liked Behind the Door the best.

The following video demonstrates how the Khronos application works:


Take a look at Alvaro Cassinelli's archive of his interactive media art if you have the chance!

Cassinelli's Meta-Perception research group is doing some interesting things, too:

"The goal of this group is to research methods for capturing and manipulating information that is normally inaccessible to humans and machines. In doing so, we hope to create new ways of perceiving the world and interacting with technology. Our research methods span fields such as human-computer interaction, media arts, physiology, and ethics."