armer poet

Linda Kutzbach | Felix Schönfeld

Concept |  The aim of this project is the combination of reality and virtuality. People and their movement are tracked with a Microsoft Kinect camera. The recorded movement is transformed into silhouettes and projected as shadows on a wall. 

The miniature projection of the viewer appears in a window in Carl Spitzweg’s painting »Der arme Poet«. Existing reality is removed from its actual atmosphere and placed into a new spatial context. This new atmosphere (the painting) can actively be influenced. Two separate existing realities (the viewer's and the painting's) are directly connected through a virtual component (the projection), thereby influencing and changing each other.

Implementation |  The Microsoft Kinect camera combines an ordinary camera with a depth sensor. The camera generates a grayscale image with additional depth information per pixel. The gray values are dependent upon the measured distance. A specific recording area 30-200 cm in front of the camera can be defined.

The software vvvv generates and manipulates video, graphics and data streams in real time. It was used to process the Kinect camera signal for this project. Using the software the grayscale image within the desired recording area is filtered to display only the silhouette of the person without disturbing objects in the background. The algorithm converts the grayscale image into a pure black silhouette and reduces the scale to generate the effect of a miniature.