Skudi Optics & Eventdesign has 1 cubic meter sized white cubes made of plexiglass that are usually rented out to events as simple light objects branded with adhesive foil. I suggested to them that we can try to transform one of their cubes into an interactive multitouch object to use for simple games. After some research I came up with a concept for the technical solution with infrared LED spotlights and a modified PS2 webcam. The limitation was that the cube should stay intact - which meant that the top surface would stay 1cm thick diffuse plexiglass. This affected the touch recognition as well as limited the type of graphics to be projected. Everything would end up very blurry.

Peter Kurzweg of Skudi worked on modifying the cube to host the short-throw-video-projector, cameras, LED spots and cables and keep the sides illuminatable without interfering with the projection. I hired Peter Kolski to program a simple pong based game in openFrameworks, using TUIO protocol signals for control. Tlalit Segal Raayoni did the 8bit style design of the game so it would look cool even on the blurry surface. The prototype of this installation ran successfully at the Electronic Beats Festival Cologne in May 2015 and was embraced by the audience who used the pong game intuitively during the concert breaks.

Making Of