Depth Time: adventures in finger painting

Sue Syn and I collaborated on a project for Dan O'Sullivan's "The Rest of You" class, in which we wore ultra sonic range finders on our wrists while we painted with our hands. The values that were recorded from the sensors were then used to render information that was captured from a camera that was recording our movements. Both the actual footage and the data augmented video were displayed together. The result is a time lapse record of our movements and color choices, allowing the user to watch the painting develop and time pass. The idea was to make the artist and viewer aware of spatial relationships that are not considered important or taken for granted. The hope being that a greater understanding of one's subconscious might come to light. While I was pleased with the result, I have been making strides toward a better mapping of the depth data than just value. The next iteration of this idea will have the painting pushed and pulled in 3D space based on the values from the range finder.

Depth Time from Matt Richard on Vimeo.