Everyone knows: Flash does vectors, and vectors scale; from phone to flat-screen, using all available pixels to render your creation in as much detail as possible. But what if your interface were so large that users had to stretch or squat to reach the buttons? What if your virtual world were so wide that visitors would need to get up and take a walk to reach the other end? Nikolai Cornell has been experimenting with these issues and will present his findings at Flashforward 2005 New York:

Human Scale Interactivity
“Life-Size” is a series of interactive media design installations that explore human-scale interaction, environmental interface and display systems. The research, experiments and projects that comprise “Life-Size” are used to embed media into environments, and to enhance interior spaces and facades by making them respond to the movements of people through the space. Cornell’s presentation shows how to move away from the mouse, keyboard and monitor and to focus on integrating architecture and media design through projects that connect physical space with immersive projected content.

Cornell has provided stills and linked to video of some of these installations on his site, madein.la, and you can tell just from the body language of those who interact with them that experiencing these virtual spaces on this scale is completely unlike the same experience on a small-screen at the end of a mouse.

Watch the video of the Interactive Cityscapes opening, particularly late in the clip when someone gently disturbs a flock of roosting crows by touching them on a wall-sized screen. The birds fly offscreen, then across the next screen, and the next and the next, passing other visitors interacting with other portions of this world who probably assume the birds are just random atmospheric animation, finally settling back down a good walk away from where they started. It’s an incredibly simple interface (touch) but the experience, even viewed passively in third-hand miniature, is goose-bump-inducing.

Cornell’s site also showcases the breadth of his design talents, including a link to his stunning Born Magazine project Untitled (It Must Be the Barracks Stove), which won the Typography category of this year’s San Francisco Flash Film Festival.

We’re very proud and excited to have Nikolai Cornell at Flashforward, and hope you will join us as well.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 7th, 2005 at 1:16 pm and is filed under Culture, Flashforward News, Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.