Technology, Arts聽& Media (TAM) major Armon Naeini's augmented reality installation, ::body, is one of six works commissioned by University Libraries as part of CU Boulder's Open Access (OA) week, Oct. 21-25.聽聽The work, which will be聽exhibited in the ATLAS Lobby until the end of the month,聽is an interpretation of聽the聽Open Access Week聽theme, "Knowledge is a Building Material." ::body聽was also exhibited during the聽ATLAS Institute Research Showcase.
The project was created with the聽C++ creative toolkit, openFrameworks, and uses an Xbox 360's Kinect camera and computer vision.
"OpenFrameworks is a free, open access, C++ creative toolkit, which allows users to explore VR/AR, artificial intelligence, data visualizations and聽hundreds of other topics," Naeini聽says.聽"Coders developed the creative toolkit intending聽it would always be free to use, open to the public聽and open to contribution."
::body is an augmented reality installation that invites viewers to walk up to a digital mirror and explore how their body's image is morphed and distorted in a digital space. The project reflects a constant feedback between humans and technology, where the viewer acts a certain way to get a response from the technology, while the technology聽itself causes聽the viewer to act out, creating a loop.
Naeini said he titled the project "::body" because聽the mirror strips聽away defining features of the viewer's body, leaving "nothing but a blob-like聽contour of the viewer."
CU Boulder's聽Open Access Week's events and activities provide聽opportunities for discussions around聽how the campus聽community can make its scholarship more equitable and more open to the world, according to the Open Access website.聽The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition () defines OA as 鈥渢he free, immediate, online availability of scholarly literature coupled with the right to use this literature fully in the digital environment."
