This project deals with the gap between information input and output within current screen based networks. When a user accesses or retrieves information on these networks they are physically nondependent on the information they are accessing. Unlike 3 dimensional, space where your position is an integral part of your psychology, 2 dimensional screen space has no cause for a body’s positioning (except access to a key board). This divorces any physical memory or information of the occurrence from the user. This physical memory plays a large part in our physiology, but is not looked at except in specialized avenues such as ergonomics. We go unaware for the most part of even the most common mental shifts such as the differences between sitting and standing. With Physical Encryption in order to access the information of another person not only do you have to understand the persons metadata, you have to understand their physical data as well. Using a camera the users body position is recorded with a java application. It is then broken down into a gestured form along with the size and color data as needed. This information then can be used to either encrypt a message, or start a game of battle ship. With the message encryption you can leave hints as to what posture needs to be taken in order to access the message. While in the battle ship game, a series of pings guide the user into the locking posture “sinking” the other players battleship. In this way a feedback loop is created between the user and used, linking not only the visual neurons but the motor neurons of the people as well.


see description statement

Anyone interested in physical games and using physicality to make real and virtual connections.

The user approaches the plasma screen and chooses an option to encrypt a message or play a game of battleship. The user moves his/her body into a position/gesture to create an encryption, or discover and match another\'s position. When the matching position is discovered, the battleship is sunk! Music, colors, and text hints are incorporated to guide the user in this challenging game.

A photo of the successfully unlocked image is uploaded to an external website, where the user can view it and email it to a friend.


Physical Encrytpion is a Java application using camera tracking for user input. The accompanying website is a dynamic site using the PHP programming language, a MySQL database, and AJAX/Javascript elements for interface display.

We have many ambitious ideas for this project, we would like it to eventually be a standalone application that can run in a web browser or as a desktop application that you can send \"locks\" from. We realized that it was necessary to simplify the creative process in order to get one thing working at a time instead of trying to get everything to work at once.