Hello Stranger

Hello Stranger was an interactive installation consisting of a field of 30 LED pillars arranged in a field and embedded in gravel. Each pillar is 3m tall and has 12 individually addressable RGB elements. Together they form a sparse 3D display which is immersive (you can walk through it), tangible (you can touch it) and real (as opposed to virtual). It was exhibited during the 2005 Science et Cite festival in Zurich. A non-interactive version was shown at the the 2006 Les yeux de la nuit exhibition in Geneva.

The gravel anchors the pillars, covers the cables and produces a nice crunching sound as you walk on it. When you move around you are tracked by overhead infra-red cameras and the light/music effects respond to your movements. Many of the different interaction scenarios are implemented using simulated neural networks.

The interactions:

Heart - the beating red heart at the centre of the space speeds up as you approach it
Rain - it always rains red on you
Fire - release fireballs from the gravel as you walk
Cortex - simple 3D walk-through model of activation between and across layers of cortex
Flower - flowers open as you walk through the gravel
Tornado - swirling lights follow you around
Spectrum (not interactive) - possibly the world's biggest Hi-Fi spectrum analyser

Watch the video for full details (3 minutes):