Invisible Dialog – work in progress report

The coronavirus outbreak is a real threat to everyone on the planet, deep cleaning suddenly took on a new public-health urgency. During this time of pandemic, we have designed an interactive projection installation that envisions an unseen world that only microscope can explore. Our aim is to heighten people’s awareness of contact and spread of bacteria or virus, which in turns can potentially help them to change their habit to be more safe in the environment.

The first prototype we have modelled this term features a projector and a Kinect. Touch is perhaps the most intimate of the senses. By engaging people’s sense of touch, it enhances the experience of interacting with the surrounding objects. The Kinect camera detects human movement using depth information, which triggers real time projection of “bacteria” over a surface.

The reaction diffusion is specifically designed to occur for a specific time frame, mimicking bacteria swarming- which is the simultaneous grow and spread of bacteria rapidly over a surface. During the specific time frame, the projection of reaction diffusion is constantly expending, which is designed to correspond to cell-movement theory, where the pattern of movement directs new cells to the edge of the colony. This swarm based complex system allows people to experience the life force around us in a whole new perspective.

Think your house is clean? Those, that we overlook always store the biggest amount of germs and are the dirtiest. That is why we have placed our device at the neglected places in our homes. Perhaps this can change people’s perception of our environment, as well as to encourage people to think more, and start adopting new good hygiene habits.

Nature provides inspiration human in many ways. One source of such inspiration is the way in which natural organisms behave when they are in groups. We look into the underlying mechanisms of complex collective behaviours of social organisms, and the theory of self-organization in biological systems. However, we as human didn’t evolve the natural ability to form a Swarm Intelligence, for we lack the connections that other species use to establish connections among individuals, and while designing Invisible Dialog, it helps us to further question how we as human can learn from swarm.

Tong Tungyue via Interactive Architecture Lab https://bit.ly/2y8BwQh