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Games

Poetry In Motion? Virtual Painting With A Kinect

An artist is working on an interactive installation that allows users to create video paintings using the motion sensor device.

Even though technology allows artists to realize their ideas using a variety of virtual methods—creating new digital aesthetics along the way—there are always styles, techniques, and influences from the pre-digital past that linger around, their creative power undiminished, refusing to be relegated to the art studios of history. One of those practices, which appeals to both digital and analogue arts, is painting, which along with drawing, is possibly the oldest form of artistic expression known to man. From the iPad to light to 3D, the act and aesthetic of painting is still around in an age dominated by mousepad movements over brush strokes. Sure, the canvas has changed from woven fabric to a high-resolution screen, but the concept remains the same. Now, visual artist Matt Lockyer gives us Living Brushes, a project that uses the Kinect as a digital paintbrush so users can generate video paintings through movement.

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He explains:

Brushes of varying influence allow a user to create expressive visuals augmented by the creativity of an emergent system of brushes.

This will be an installation soon that will allow the user to paint with brushes that have a simple swarm intelligence to them.

While at the moment we can only see the generated videos, full of amassing colors that swirl and dance before dissipating, we imagine the experience is something like a performance where the fine hand movements of a painter get translated into operatic gestures, with the user becoming a conductor of a flocking visual orchestra. So it’ll be interesting to see the resulting exhibit to see how this installation takes form.

Below is the second video of this work in progress, which reminds us of the pulsing forms in Takeshi Murata’s beautiful Melter series.

[via Joystiq]