Bedford, Mass. - InterSense Inc.'s IS-1200 VisTracker system has been incorporated into the Grand Text Auto exhibition taking place from October 4 through December 15 at the University of California, Irvine’s Beall Center for Art + Technology.
Collectively authored by six artists and scholars, Grand Text Auto is a popular blog about the potential of digital media. The event at the Beall Center marks the first time a blog has become a gallery exhibition, during which Grand Text Auto members are putting concepts and ideas into practice.
InterSense’s technology has been incorporated into an augmented reality (AR) installation of the desktop-based interactive drama, Façade. The new AR version of Façade, developed at the Georgia Institute of Technology, utilizes the VisTracker system as a means to track the players in real time as they move freely throughout the scene.
Along with motion tracking, the players use gestures and speech to interact with virtual characters that appear graphically imposed in the scene, using an augmented video see-thru display. The InterSense inertial-optical IS-1200 VisTracker is incorporated into the head-mounted display to track the player's viewpoint over a large area to ensure that s/he has a realistic interactive experience with the virtual characters. AR Façade is described by its creators as a piece that “explores the combination of interactive virtual characters, non-linear narrative, and unconstrained embodied interaction and serves as an instrument for understanding the relationship between presence and engagement.”
It was created by Steven Dow, Manish Mehta, Blair MacIntyre, and Michael Mateas (now at UC Santa Cruz) at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s GVU Center. The Beall Center for Art + Technology is located at the Claire Trevor School of the Arts, University of California, Irvine (712 Arts Plaza, Irvine, CA). The exhibition is open Tuesday and Wednesday from 12 noon to 5 pm and Thursday through Saturday from 12 to 8 pm.