Virtual Marionette

Inversus is a digital interactive installation that explores the relationship between user actions with common objects: lamps, speakers and fans. It is an interactive machine that shifts the conceptual understanding a user traditionally has about a specific object, making people wonder: why should a lamp be used only to illuminate?

[vimeo 126317214 w=580&h=326]

Well, sometimes you feel that you should share your presentations with the community and not just with the people that attended the conference. The problem is that my presentations are a combination of images and oral explanations, and by sharing a PDF with just the images you can not understand what it means. So, I have decided to create an animated presentation with a synthesized voice to help.

This video was made from the paper presentation at ACHI (February 2015)
It explains the concept, the process and the framework.

Luís Leite presented in the 24th of February the Inversus publication at the Eighth International Conference on Advances in Computer-Human Interactions (ACHI) in Lisbon.

This publication is now available for download at the download section.

Exhibition of Virtual Marionette interactive installations at Teatro Municipal de Vila do Conde from 14th December till 31th December 2013.

I was invited to participate with my virtual marionette work as part of my contribution to Lafontana Formas Animadas (LFA) puppetry company. This exhibition gathers the work of 15 years of puppetry from LFA. My research and work contributes to new approaches of puppetry.

I invite the participants to interact with Inversus and bePuppit installations and to send me some feedback to virtual.marionette@grifu.com

more pictures, click the more button.

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[vimeo 78027358 w=580&h=326]

INVERSUS – artistic installation that explores interaction by using every-day objects

Why should a lamp be used only to illuminate ? … a speaker to play a sound ? ….or a fan to produce wind ?

This every-day objects are used commonly as transmission devices (light, sound and wind).
I knew, before starting this project, that a speaker could be used as a microphone.

My proposal was to find out if a transmission device could be used as a reception device for interaction purposes.

The Lamps (in this case: Leds) where used as light sensors, the speakers (in this case: piezzos) where used as pressure sensors and the fan was used as a blowing sensor.

The main concept of inversus was to invert the meaning of transmission devices into reception devices. A sensitive machine that capture human interaction to produce sound and visual kinetics. A performing instrument that gives life to a mechanic flower that spins when someone blows into the machine producing an animated shadow like in shadow puppetry. There is also a virtual marionette inside the machine that reacts to the pressure of the pads, this marionette is rigged with bones that are mapped to the pads that make them squash and stretch producing animation.
This instrument was made from a washing machine changing the meaning absorbing the spinning metaphor as a mixing machine. To extend the mixing metaphor i used a spinning wheel that creates a hypnotic effect.

Oct.2013
+ info at http://www.grifu.com/vm/?p=883#more-883
or http://www.virtualmarionette.grifu.com/