Abundance

= ABUNDANCE =

__What is it?__
Abundance is a temporary public digital device installed by ZER01 – the Art and Technology and Network in 2007 in the City of San Jose, California. During night time, the city hall plaza turns into a public social space by reflecting people's movements motion status. This device was designed by Camile Utterback. Every participant is highlighted in color sihouette. Pedestrians become background that is formed with abstract lines, shapes and colours. The image is constantly changing, that makes the hall plaza at night looks like a piece of live canvas. media type="youtube" key="XkOrX9WC-N0" height="344" width="425"

__How it works?__
Abundance uses digital camera inside the hall to capture pedestrian's movements and project them onto the round hall wall. White lines are added into the digital cameras. If a person cross the white line, moon shaped graphic starts to release to capture and reflect this person's movement. Individuals make cool colors while groups make warm colors. The colors erase each other and cover each other.

__My Analysis__
As a night event space, it successfully motivates people to gather, communicate and being active. Moreover, it unites the community instead of purely being an interesting playful device. This device makes changes. It changed an ordinary building into a dynamic social exchange center. I think it inspires me a lot with my own project. In my project, we are working on technology and nature together. Basically, we have to change an ordinary place into an active place. Also, instead of "introducing" the device, we would like to allow people to "explore" the device themselves. Since not all the people like group events, this device is also good for both individuals and groups. One disadvantage of this device is that, it's really hard to capture the motion graphic from the audience point of view. Personally, I think the graphic is too abstract to follow. Although sometimes it shows very clear when there is not a lot people, it's still very confusing when lots of people passing by. Pedestrians might not understand the motion graphics as their own tracking graphic because they can "track" themselves on the screen. I think the reason is because this device is huge and it's installed on a round shape building. However, it makes sense critically. It is hard to get attention to individuals when there are a lot of people. I have been thinking of making an interactive canvas. People can use movements to draw and paint with their body.

__Reference__
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