Interactive environment: "Atmo"
This half-year project focused on building an interactive environment for patients in the princes Maxima children hospital. At the end of the minor, in a team of eight students we build an interactive installation to bring children-books to life. Within the team I had the function "formgiver".
The Working
After reading one of the special books with their parents, Atmo can bring the story to life! Place the book on the magical table and the characters will leave the book and take place in the magical spheres. Let's explore them! Walk over the floor and you'll hear the bubbles around you. Get closer to the purple sphere and you'll hear an evil laugh coming from it! Ursula from "The little mermaid" must be hiding in this one! Touch it and she can even create a thunderstorm in the light up spheres above your head...
Various characters from the story will show themselves and react different on you presence. When you come close to one of the little red-light-up spheres, you'll hear the song Sebastian sings and when you touch him he will move to another sphere.
Little girl meets Peter Pan and listens to the magical sound he makes.
I was highly involved in the creation off the magical scanning table. This included the design, interaction and production by laser-cutting of the object.
The scanning table is where the interaction between the user and the installation starts. Therefore, it is important that it invites you to interact with it when the installation isn’t activated yet. That’s why the table lights up and blinks when there is no book present; it asks for your attention. Placing the book on the table in such a way that the incomplete cirkel gets completed with the quarter cirkel that's visible on the book. After you placed a book on the table, the light changes to one certain color; the color of the environment. At this point, the table stops blinking. It’s satisfied. Now, the lights on the ceiling starts to blink and the attention goes to the rest of the installation.
Complete the cirkel by placing the book on the table
The table changes color and stops blinking.
The lights in the air light up and the attention goes to the installation.
Besides the design and creation of the scanning-table, I was also responsible for the base of the magical spheres.
We used balloons to create the spheres. By putting a bottle in the balloons, we where able to put the lights in them.
The installation was fully functional. The programming and technical installation was not one off my activities.
