Audience from Chris O’Shea on Vimeo.

Chris O’Shea and rAndom International have completed a lovely installation at the Royal Opera House (UK). 64 mirrors move, each distinctively, to follow moving attendees who catch their “attention.” The installation is powered by Chris’ custom code and rAndom’s hardware and circuits, build on C++, OpenFrameWorks, and Intel’s ubiquitous open source computer vision library OpenCV.

I really enjoy how elegant the resulting design is, and the way it fragments the faces of viewers in a sea of mirrors, bobbing around with simulated intelligence.

Audience for Deloitte Ignite Festival [Project Page, Chris O’Shea]

I expect this could inspire other computer vision projects, or motorized screen concepts in place of mirrors.

Here’s what the video analysis software interface looks like:

See also: other photos of Audience on Flickr

Multi-touch for visualists? It’s coming, and it may have nothing to do with names like Apple or Microsoft. But while many projects now are experimental and pricey, your hands do seem to be close to being liberated from the mouse and keyboard alone.

No word on pricing and no real availability information, but the concept is very cool and the demos look fantastic: it’s the MultiTouch Cell, a plug-and-play, stackable, modular box with multi-touch input capabilities. The idea is to grab one, or two, or twenty of these ready-to-use boxes, running PCs with your choice of OS, and go to town with gesturally-controlled on-screen visuals. On paper (or screens, that is), it looks terrific; the creators say the unit is:

• Available in 32″, 46″ sizes with full HD or HD-ready resolution

• High resolution LCDs: full HD or HD-ready
• Several Cells can be combined into one display
• Scratch-resistant glass
• Self-calibrating, built-in diagnostics, and 50,000+-hour expected life
• Connect the display to Mac, Windows, Linux computers, running their proprietary CornerStone tracking and rendering screen “based on industry-standard libraries and protocols”

Now, naturally, there are more questions than answers here — not only about pricing and availability, but the software specifically and how it can be extended. But there’s no question this sort of thing is the future — which raises plenty of questions about why Microsoft isn’t being more aggressive with their Surface, as they could presumably do just this and make it cheaper and easy for developers.

multitouch.fi (Project Page)

More Multi-Touch Goodness

While we’re at it, here are a couple of related multi-touch projects I’ve seen lately — each, perhaps, more practical for the readers of this site than the proposed Cell project above: