Displacement | A Mixed Reality Installation
Q: How do we create a multi-dimensional 'public space'-?
Project Description
Displacement is a uniqe immersive experience that invites people to engage with each other in a new way. It is a real-time experiment that connects people across space and dimension — merging the real and virtual domains.
At a conceptual level, the artwork raises questions about the nature of human connection and what it means to be co-located and 'present'. It also explores how people occupy 'public space' in both the real and virtual worlds.
The project is composed of 3 main parts -
A freestanding red doorway installed at a physical location (in Austin);
A virtual environment that mirrors the real site — transposed with a wheat field;
Player interaction via a web browser (MVP);
Overview of key interactions -
The real/virtual doorways act as touchpoints connecting those in the physical environment with those in the digital environment in real time;
Real <> Virtual: A Kinect 2.0 camera positioned near the door, uses real-time tracking and registers people walking through the door. A point cloud avatar of the person is generated and emerges through the virtual doorway in real-time;
Virtual <> Real: Players walking through the (virtual) doorway trigger the real doorway to light up, (so that even when no-one is physically present, the doorway lights up).
Both ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ avatars co-exist in the same virtual environment; the viewer in virtual space is able to observe the 'real' avatars in a kind of ethereal encounter.
The project brings together different skillsets and technologies that include: Motion Capture / Physical computing / Programming / 3D & Game design / Virtual reality (VR) / Architecture and design.
Site Photos
The project was installed as part of the Austin Studio Tour 2024.
Special thanks to Batch ATX in East Austin for hosting us in their beer garden for the duration of the tour. It was super interesting to see how people engaged with the project in-person and how they found unintended uses for the door.
To learn more about the development, please visit our project blog -
Visit the virtual environment (though it's no longer live and connected) -
The Displacement project was conceived by Artist and Project Lead, Nazia Parvez. To read more about the project background, please visit the Displacement description on her website: formblu.com/displacement
