Bizarre Russian Interactive Art is Surgery Control Concept!

I have written many times on the concept of what I call “gesture control”. This is the idea of waving your arm or hand in a movement that is picked up by sensors (optical or other tracking) and which is then translated into the movement of a robotic surgical device, OR room or equipment control, or energy delivery system. You can see all these posts by clicking gesture control on the category drop down on the sidebar. Some faves are here here and here.

Lily Chaos has reviewed a bizzare interactive Russian art display that employs gesture control concepts.

She writes

A new video art installation by Russian media artist Sergey Kotsun invites the viewer to become the author and main character of an interactive audio-visual performance.

The viewer’s image is captured via a webcam and thrown up onto a projection screen. On the screen, two lines of transparent square boxes are also displayed, with the lines approaching each other at the top and veering away at the bottom, almost forming two sides of a triangle. Inside the boxes are different geometrical shapes.

As the viewer waves or makes other motions that can be picked up by the webcam, a computer program analyzes those movements. Any time a movement is perceived to intersect with one of the transparent squares, the corresponding geometrical shape displays onscreen and the sound of a musical instrument is played.

The viewer, in effect, becomes the artist as well as an integral part of the performance, creating movements that translate into sounds and abstract compositions of circles, squares, lines and half-moons. Kind of like playing an air banjo from inside a colorful kaleidoscope.

Here is a video of it in play- too Yoko Ono for my musical taste but pay attention to how the participant’s gestures are picked up by the camera and converted into actions- the same principle I advocate in the OR.

If you have a webcam you can try a home demo!