KHRONOS PROJECTOR (2004)

[original Khronos Projector webpage]

The Khronos Projector is an interactive art installation allowing people to explore pre-recorded movie content in an entirely new way. By touching the projection screen, the user is able to send parts of the image forward or backwards in time.

The goal of the Khronos Projector is to go beyond these forms of exclusive temporal control, by giving the user an entirely new dimension to play with: by touching the projection screen, the user is able to send parts of the image forward or backwards in time. By actually touching a deformable projection screen, shaking it or curling it, separate “islands of time” as well as “temporal waves” are created within the visible frame. This is done by interactively reshaping a two-dimensional spatio-temporal surface that “cuts” the spatio-temporal volume of data generated by a movie.

PressureCity2

A C++ OpenGL program interactively reshapes a spatio – temporal surface which cuts the “video-cube”, i.e. the spatio – temporal volumetric data representing the video (3D texture). The Khronos Projector deformable screen is unusual in that it is both touch – sensitive and elastic. The system ’ s principle of operation is use of a high speed camera to detect the intensity of reflected infrared light from an array of LEDs. When users push on the screen, light is reflected from the area they are pushing back towards a camera which is able to gauge where and how intensely users are touching.

Although the pressure-sensitive deformable screen was initially developed for the slicing the “video-cube”, it can in general be used to manipulate arbitrarily-shaped slices from any volumetric dataset (e.g. body scans, layered geological data, architectural or mechanical drawings, etc). In particular, it can be a starting point for developing a pre-operatory interface capable of showing inner body sections mapped onto complex surfaces, just as they would appear to the surgeon during an actual operation. The Volume Slicing Display is a prototype of such a device.

For more

  • For an in-depth description (with videos and applets), check the original Khronos Projector webpage

 

Exhibition/Publications