MEMENTO MORI
October 2016, New York
Interactive Window, Creating Coding, Physical Computing
Group Work
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MEMENTO MORI, NE OBLIVISCI VIVERE is an interactive window display project celebrates the cycles of life and death, growth and decay.
In the tradition of Dia de los Muertos, colorful and vibrant altars are created to remember those that have passed on, providing offerings to assist them in their journey to the afterlife. Here we are reminded that with life comes death, and with death, new life.
People press the button on the window to take a selfie and then the face will decay to skull, to dust, to new lives.
Exhibition
The project was shown a week on Kimmel Center, 60 Washington Square South.
Group Members
Anne K Goodfriend
Olivia Cueva
Jordan Frand Nevler
My Contribution
Ideation
Digital Visual Art
Programming
Design Tools
Processing
Arduino
CNC
Ideation
The theme of the window is "time". Time means the dynamic life, it leads to death meanwhile to new lives.
We wanted to design two interactive windows which one is the Relive Window, reminds people that with life comes the death while the other one is the Decay Window, reminds that with death comes new life.
Diagram
Technical Solution
Firstly, the button on the window is made by capacity sensor, it will send the signal to the Arduino Board when people press the button.
When the Arduino Board receives the signal from the capacity sensor it will trigger the webcam to take a selfie of the people who stands in front of the window.
Then the Processing Program will analyze to catch the face of the selfie, then generates the skull face gradually. For the Relive Window, the skull face will grow flowers in the end, while the skull face will decay to dust on the Decay Window.
My Work Contribution
Firstly, I wrote a basic demo to test if I can take a selfie and replace the face with a skull by recognizing the position of the face.
After recognizing the face successfully, I designed two different visual interaction. For the first one, when people pressed the button, the screen will take his selfie and the selfie will turn to skull and then the flowers will generate gradually on the face. Below are the several versions I wrote to make compare and find the most satisfying one.
See codes from here:
The other effect I wrote was the dust effect. The interactive process is when people press the button, he will see his face on the screen and turning to be blur and then be dusts all falling down.
