Things are well underway for my interactive installation at the upcoming Nuit Blanche art event in Toronto later this month.
I have been asked to create an interactive experience utilizing the storefront of two businesses in downtown Toronto. My concept involves utilizing video to connect the participants at either location.
What if people at two separate locations could interact together, transcend physical separation and dance together in real time?
I will be using webcams to capture the silhouettes of participants, and large LED screens in the store windows to display the interaction. Viewers at either location will be able to see the outlines of themselves as well as the outlines of viewers elsewhere on the screen before them .
In order to accomplish this, I've enlisted the help of an incredibly talented programmer: Bryan Rite.
Bryan working hard to get our custom program running
We have identified that we will require four webcams to capture the images and four laptops to process the data. This complex program is written in Bash script and utilizes gStreamer to both encode the local video and stream that over a network, as well as receive a network stream and merge that with a local video.
I will be announcing the locations for this installation shortly, so check back again soon!
Nuit Blanche takes place on September 29th in Toronto. See more information about the event here.