interactive floor projections

dust's picture

here is a proof of concept I'm working on that utilizes my midi arpeggiator plugin.

this video demo's the use of the floor as an interactive instrument. the project target is to be a children's discovery museum exhibit.

while building this instrument it became apparent that some sort of interpretive and or choreographed dance / theatrical routine could be performed with multiple kinects and or triad chord articulations in concatenation with a second person. like setting one foot to be a chord and the other to lead instruments starts making much more complex instrumentations.

the implicit intention is to teach children cognitive and muscle memory through a cross modal auditory and visual sensory feedback system based on the body and motion. in other words a giant musical simon says type of game, which ironically isn't as fun to watch.

the idea isn't entirely novel as i have seen a few interactive floor projections and multiple floor pianos. you can even buy these types of things. most people ask why there isn't a chromatic scale and my answer is that it would sound like a cat running across your piano keys at night time. as it is now its fun for most ages as it requires no musical talent at all.

I'm thinking of some to incorporate rhythm, like possible maybe looping play head people jump or something to create rhythm sort of like a jumping rope idea i guess. i want to make it fun for kids but don't want to make the cliche hopscotch piano. any thoughts on this subject. has anybody done anything similar.

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franz's picture
Re: interactive floor projections

nice !

cybero's picture
Re: interactive floor projections

Cleverly done and amusing. I can see that being used in various situations - musical doormats even.

dust's picture
Re: interactive floor projections

haha musical door mat. my group is condensing it will be much more than that as there is another group going the musical doormat route by using arduino boards. thats so funny you say that cybero as ironically it is going in a elevator doorway !

it will be interesting to see which is a more responsive route. i'm contending the kinect + qc + _1024 perspective with projections will be more interesting once the animations are in place, rather than ardunio sensors on the floor. as it is now both projects are simple buttons on the floor.

here is me playing the instrument with chord articulations added to one leg. sounds much better. as you can see in the video the projectors throw distance is way to large as the projector is pretty far away. that is easily solved. the second is making the kinects view distance shorter as well.

doses anybody remember this 80's tom hanks movie ? i mentioned it to the kids in my group but they where not even born when this movie came out.

it seems that most of these floor projection things I'm seeing on youtube are mall exhibits.

cybero's picture
Re: interactive floor projections

I was thinking in terms of footfallers [new shoppers] into shops, going between departments. There's totally loads of potential applications , uses, for this sort of interactive projection. Very entertaining.

mattgolsen's picture
Re: interactive floor projections

Really cool idea, Dust.

It would be neat if it had a way to switch modes, either user triggered, or timed. Switch from your normal setup to maybe series of notes on each from a popular or easily recognizable song. Another idea would be to trigger rhythm sounds from other parts of the body, enabling the user to sort of "dance" with the song they're playing.