Company is an interactive multimedia experience of stories, games, and performances. Guests enter an installation environment suggesting a living room. They meet a life-sized figure protruding from a canvas, enlivened through video projection, with an invitation to stay. The figure makes requests of guests, discloses stories and secrets in absurd and sometimes uncomfortable progressions, and entertains.

Company creates an illusion of complex interaction through location-based triggers and a video bank of responses. The figure appears to test her visitors, reacting to guests’ decisions to obey or refuse requests. Her behavior changes more radically amid larger gatherings of company versus the company of lone potential-companions; with each get-together she adjusts her level of intimacy accordingly. Induced by guests’ actions, in combination with branching and randomized script pathways, each encounter with Company unravels divergently and indeterminately.

Model showing aerial view of environment, approximately 12' x 12'; containing a couch, 2 chairs, and 6'x4' 3D panel with projection and mixed media.

Model showing aerial view of environment, approximately 12' x 12'; containing a couch, 2 chairs, and 6'x4' 3D panel with projection and mixed media.

Guests’ locations are tracked via Kinect sensor, using the software OpenNI with Processing to trigger video playback from a databank of various expressions, behaviors, and stories.  Departing from synthetic characters visualized through generative computer animation, Company utilizes projection-mapped videos of a human actor in the attempt of a more dynamic range of expression and affect.  

The first prototype of Company exhibited at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and received a grant for continued development from RPI’s Center for Cognition, Communication, and Culture. The second exhibition took place at Harvestworks in May of 2014, in NYC. Company continues in development, with expanded content and methods for interaction.

 

Sample One-Person Interaction

Sample Two-Person Interaction

Sample Group Interaction (and kick out)

If guests get too close, they are reprimanded...

If guests overstay their welcome, they are thrown out...