How can you increase the immersion of data? The bachelor thesis “Experiencing Abstract Information” by Jochen Winker and Stefan Kuzaj introduces theoretical principles, and shows them using interactive examples.

There are four essential parts in making abstract information experienceable: information itself, relevant senses, fitting emotion and a direct reference of the presentation to the information. With their method you can not only design fitting media, but also check existing media for their potential.

To demonstrate the systematics, they built three interactive installations. By using them you become an interactive diagram in a virtual mirror, cause virtual water-pollution in a water-basin or compare the time you have to work in different countries to buy a big mac or bread. All of these installations show a different approach of immersed data transfer.

Flyfire, a project initiated by the SENSEable City Laboratory in collaboration with ARES Lab (Aerospace Robotics and Embedded Systems Laboratory) aims to transform any ordinary space into a highly immersive and interactive display environment.

In its first implementation, the Flyfire project sets out to explore the capabilities of this display system by using a large number of self-organizing micro helicopters. Each helicopter contains small LEDs and acts as a smart pixel. Through precisely controlled movements, the helicopters perform elaborate and synchronized motions and form an elastic display surface for any desired scenario.

With the self-stabilizing and precise controlling technology from the ARES Lab, the motion of the pixels is adaptable in real time. The Flyfire canvas can transform itself from one shape to another or morph a two-dimensional photographic image into an articulated shape. The pixels are physically engaged in transitioning images from one state to another, which allows the Flyfire canvas to demonstrate a spatially animated viewing experience.

In this installation YesYesNo teamed up with The Church, Inside Out Productions and Electric Canvas to turn the Auckland Ferry Building into an interactive playground. Their  job was to create an installation that would go beyond merely projection on buildings and allow viewers to become performers, by taking their body movements and amplifying them 5 stories tall.

They used three different types of interaction – body interaction on the two stages, hand interaction above a light table, and phone interaction with the tracking of waving phones. There were six  scenes, cycled every hour for the public.

‘SixthSense‘ is a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information.

We’ve evolved over millions of years to sense the world around us. When we encounter something, someone or some place, we use our five natural senses to perceive information about what is facing us. That information helps us make decisions and chose the right actions to take in a situation. But arguably the most useful information that can help us make the right decision is not naturally perceivable with our five senses, namely the data, information and knowledge that mankind has accumulated about everything and which is increasingly all available online. Moreover, Information is confined traditionally on paper or digitally on a screen. ‘WUW’ attempts to free information from its confines and releases it into the world, seamlessly integrating it with the physical world.

With the miniaturization of computing devices that fit inside our pockets, we are always connected to the digital world. However, there is no link between our interaction with these digital devices and interaction with the physical world. ‘WUW’ bridges this gap by augmenting the physical world around us with digital information and proposing natural hand gestures as the mechanism to interact with that information. ‘WUW’ brings the intangible information out into the tangible world. By using a camera and a tiny projector mounted on a hat or coupled in a pendant like device, ‘WUW’ sees what you see and visually augments any surfaces or objects you are interacting with. ‘WUW’ projects information to any surface, walls, and the objects around us, and to interact with the information through natural hand gestures, arm movements, or with the object itself.

The Artvertiser by Julien Oliver, imagines a near-future where advertising in public space can be replaced by art. It is an urban, augmented-reality project, consisting of custom-made handheld binocular devices and specially designed software. The Artvertiser considers Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, Puerta del Sol in Madrid, Times Square in New York, and other sites dense with advertisements, as potential exhibition space. The Artvertiser software recognises individual advertisements, each of which become a virtual ‘canvas’ displaying artworks when viewed through the Artvertiser binoculars, and what’s best: the art will appear instead when viewed through the binoculars regardless of the surface the corresponding advertisement is on. The Artvertiser allows artists to create a new visual layer onto the topology of the city, which can only be seen when viewed through a device which cogently blends the aesthetics of the past, with a futuristic functionality. transmediale.10 presents the Artvertiser binoculars and video documentation of ‘artverts’ being placed into urban locations within Berlin.

The Artvertiser is part of Berlin’s Transmediale Festival which opens on 2 February.

A Parallel Image is an installation by Gebhard Sengmüller, in collaboration with Franz Büchinger, supported by Fels-Multiprint.

A Parallel Image is an electronic camera obscura. This media-archaeological, interactive sculpture is based on the fictive assumption that the currently still valid principle of electronically transmitting moving images, namely by breaking them down into single images and image lines, was never discovered. The result is an apparatus that attempts a highly elaborate parallel transmission of every single pixel from sender to receiver. This is only possible by connecting camera and monitor using about 2,500 cables. Unlike conventional electronic image transmission procedures, A Parallel Image is technologically completely transparent, conveying to the viewer a correspondence between real world and transmission that can be sensually experienced.

In this installation, YesYesNo teamed up with The Church, Inside Out Productions and Electric Canvas to turn the Auckland Ferry Building into an interactive playground. Their job was to create an installation that would go beyond merely projection on buildings and allow viewers to become performers, by taking their body movements and amplifying them five stories tall.

They used 3 different types of interaction – body interaction on the two stages, hand interaction above a light table, and phone interaction with the tracking of waving phones. There were six scenes, cycled every hour for the public.

Syn Emergence is a project which examines Rich Bevan’s own associative relationships between sound, form and space.

The project is constructed according to a range of specific sonic and spatial scale rule sets (micro, component, meso and macro) which he designed as part of a cross-disciplinary notation/cartographic system.

The film was conceived as part of Rich’s Masters at the Bartlett School of Architecture (Unit 15).

A work of art that explores the relationship between nature, motion and sound, The Interpretation takes us on a languid journey through a slowly flourishing forest. Hinting at vague memories of microbiology and rotating through a cool organic spectrum of greens, blues, browns, blacks and whites; this motion-based work will entrance its viewer as the forest evolves. The Interpretation is set to a minimal score filled with authentic sounds of nature, complimenting the environmental essence of the visuals.

Visuals by Michael Paul Young. Soundtrack by Michael Cina.

The Austrian artist Lia – one of the early pioneers of Software and Net Art – has been creating digital art, installations and sound works since 1995. Her Internet works combine various traditions of drawing and painting with the aesthetic of digital images and algorithms. They are characterized by a minimalist quality, and by an affinity with conceptual art.

Inspired by a temporary perfect view to the Viennice “Riesenrad” and the moon with it’s permanently changing appearance above it Arcs21 is a piece about a possible new form of architecture in the 21st century.