The inspirational project that I want to discuss is called Notional Field created by Annica Cuppetelli and Cristobal Mendoza. “Notional Field is an interactive installation that consists of a wall-mounted sculpture containing hundreds of vertical and parallel lines made of elastic cord that are projected upon with a computer-generated, interactive animation of a similar number of lines” (Cuppetelli and Mendoza).
The physical strings remain static while those projected lines are constantly influenced by the audience’s movement. Those virtual lines look so smooth and soft with a good elasticity to restore to their original state. The comparison between the motionless physical strings and the moving projected lines well displays different states of the same objects under different conditions. The densely distributed lines also virtually appear like the strings of a harp, which also drives the audience’s movement to become softer and more coherent. It somehow has the power to calm people down to carefully feel the movement of those lines.
This project uses a video camera to capture the audience’s gestures and translate them into virtual forces that are applied on those computer-generated projected lines. It uses a motion tracking function (probably PoseNet) to capture the movement and turns it into a “force” to affect those lines. It also adapts the “spring” function to simulate the elasticity of ropes so that they can restore to the straight and vertical position, just like the physical strings.