INTERACTIVE OBJECTS & SPACES_Studio Index Interface
Scott Nazarian nazarian@artcenter.edu
Nikolai Cornell cornell@artcenter.edu

BACKGROUND: One of the frequently recurring topics of conversation in the MDP Studio during the 2002-2003 academic year were the issues surrounding the challenge of establishing a visual-informational dialogue between the internal and external; between the work in which students were engaged and the limnal spaces of the hallway and studio entrance.

The inaugural session of Phil Van Allen's Interactive Objects and Spaces
provided an ideal forum for the conceptual and demonstrative development of a working prototype, an indexical, visual information object. In the words of Mr. Van Allen himself, an 'experience machine' , mediating a visual-informational exchange with the school at large.

Project partners Scott Nazarian and Nikolai Cornell posit two central
questions in the development of this 'Visual Studio Index', the first
concerning SCALE and the second ENCOUNTER. What functional and behavioral expectations are transposed between small and large versions of the same interface? In terms of the relationship between information and the body, does a physical 'encounter' with an 'informational object' elucidate or obfuscate? In other words, how do users react to human scale interfaces and do such interfaces make the experience of information more or less lucid? Finally, the project serves as a way of asking at what resolution we conduct our analog interactions with the world.

EXPERIENCE
From afar, the V.S.I. screen displays an 'attract' mode of a slowly spinning three dimensional column of data-cards. As the viewer approaches, the scene zooms to a central card within the column and displays displays nine faces of current students in the Media Design Studio. The user is able to view the current projects each student is working on by selecting their profile from the screen. When a profile is activated, the interface 'drops away' and zooms back out into the 3D space of suspended cards, each one representing an individual project 'destination'. The transitional sequence ends as the interface zooms back into a screen detailing the selected student project.

In combination with the scale of the screen interface, these 'cinematic'
transitions are meant to create a momentary sense of vertigo, as if the
viewer may in fact be pulled forward and 'through' the screen, into
data-space. This displacement of body and information is central to the
overall experience of the V.S.I. not only because it dramatizes the viewers' spatial relationship to the information, but also because it foregrounds the notion that 'physical' computing is a mode of human/computer interaction capable of generating unique social and learning environments.

DEVELOPMENT
The V.S.I. required the design and development of a Macromedia Flash interface that was placed inside of a Macromedia Director Environment. Four Sharp infrared sensors, that are connected to the Mylar Screen, take a continuous distance reading and report the distance as an analog voltage to the Brainstem. The Brainstem converts the voltage into a digital signal that is sent via USB cable to an Apple G4 running Macromedia Director 9. The data is received by Director and then forwarded to the Flash interface. The Flash interface then in turn receives the data, processes it and displays the corresponding graphics based on the numbers received.

Technology used:
Hardware:
5' x 7.5' Mylar Screen
Apple G4 Tower running OS 9.2
Acroname Brainstem GP 1.0 Module
5 Sharp GP2Y0A02YK IR Sensors
100' of copper cable

Software:
Macromedia Director 9
Macromedia Flash MX
Adobe Photoshop 7