Technology, Arts & Media (TAM) major Armon Naeini's augmented reality installation, ::body, is one of six works commissioned by University Libraries as part of CU Boulder's Open Access (OA) week, Oct. 21-25. The work, which will be exhibited in the ATLAS Lobby until the end of the month, is an interpretation of the Open Access Week theme, "Knowledge is a Building Material." ::body was also exhibited during the ATLAS Institute Research Showcase.
The project was created with the C++ creative toolkit, openFrameworks, and uses an Xbox 360's Kinect camera and computer vision.
"OpenFrameworks is a free, open access, C++ creative toolkit, which allows users to explore VR/AR, artificial intelligence, data visualizations and hundreds of other topics," Naeini says. "Coders developed the creative toolkit intending it would always be free to use, open to the public and open to contribution."
::body is an augmented reality installation that invites viewers to walk up to a digital mirror and explore how their body's image is morphed and distorted in a digital space. The project reflects a constant feedback between humans and technology, where the viewer acts a certain way to get a response from the technology, while the technology itself causes the viewer to act out, creating a loop.
Naeini said he titled the project "::body" because the mirror strips away defining features of the viewer's body, leaving "nothing but a blob-like contour of the viewer."
CU Boulder's Open Access Week's events and activities provide opportunities for discussions around how the campus community can make its scholarship more equitable and more open to the world, according to the Open Access website. The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) defines OA as “the free, immediate, online availability of scholarly literature coupled with the right to use this literature fully in the digital environment."
