Kumiko Kushiyama: Touch the drop

Artist(s):

Kumiko Kushiyama

Title:

Touch the drop

Exhibition:

SIGGRAPH 2004: Synaesthesia

Creation Year:

2004

Medium:

Original touch-screen display, PC

Size:

400 milimeters x 400 milimeters x 1000 milimeters

Artist Statement:

This work is a new type of interactive mixed-reality sculpture. Viewers can feel a picture with a touch-screen display that we developed to convey a unique sense of touch. The display’s jeffy-touch technology provides an interface that viewers touch to manipulate a drop of water. Our interest is in creating an imaginably artificial, mixed-media
environment that exists between real life and virtual space.

Technical Information:

Touch the drop consists of three components: image generation, movement of a drop of water to generate an image of a drop of water, and a sound-feedback system. The system captures an image from a from touch screen in real time and extracts a position and shape, then narrows down the information required to generate a drop of water and transmits a message to the image-generation component. This component shapes generation of the drop of water and animates it in real time. The shape-generation algorithm for the water drop uses a meta-ball-generation algorithm to generate the drop’s shape and behavior. The system also uses MIDI data to generate sounds that correspond to the displayed events.