Kate's ITP Blog

Our final project will be, in brief, a photo booth that presents the user with a rear-projection screen showing their silhouette and falling particles they can interact with by moving their body. As they interact, their true image will be captured four times, as in a traditional photo booth, hopefully revealing interesting poses and expressions due to their interaction. The traditional photos and a screenshot of the screen with silhouette and particles as they see it will be shown, in an alternating scroll, on a monitor outside the booth. The booth itself will be constructed of semi-transparent cloth so that the lights and motion insight will be somewhat revealed to outside observers. Details to be worked out will be how to inspire interesting movements and expressions during this experience. We currently plan to generate moments of surprise to achieve this effect, by altering the appearance and/or behavior of the particles.

As a first step, our team (Daniel Soltis, Scott Varland & Jeff Sable) observed people using several photo booths around the city. Most interestingly to us, we noticed that people prefer to use the booths in pairs or groups, that they frequently adjust their proximity to the camera between shots, and that they invariably closed the small curtain (though left open in the photos below for our purposes), despite the fact that it affords only a small amount of privacy. We will explore this concept of perceived privacy in our piece. Also of note is the fact that the vast majority of photo booths in the city are located in bars, where people's self-consciousness about pictures of themselves being taken is reduced through alcohol. We're hoping that the stylization of the "mirror" the users will see of themselves will have an equally palliative effect.

See subsequent posts for details as we continue to work on the project.