AtmoSPHERE: Representing Space and Movement Using Sand Traces in an Interactive Zen Garden

We introduce AtmoSPHERE, a new method for automatically imbuing a sand table--or interactive zen garden--with properties of its surrounding space and occupants. AtmoSPHERE uses a Microsoft Kinect to monitor and extract movement in a room and then visualizes representations of this movement physically via sand traces on a custom built XY servo sandbox table. We present our prototype system, the design process and interaction modes, feedback from a preliminary deployment, and a discussion of future work.\n\nWe were quite excited to see a commercialization of this idea: Bruce Shapiro's "Kinectic Art Table", which received a pledge of nearly $2m on Kickstarter. More here.

Publications

teaser image of AtmoSPHERE: Representing Space and Movement Using Sand Traces in an Interactive Zen Garden

AtmoSPHERE: Representing Space and Movement Using Sand Traces in an Interactive Zen Garden

Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA), 2015.
Keywords: Visualization; Tangible Interactive Art; Machine Aesthetics; Calm Technology; XY Servo Table; Kinect; XR interaction

Videos

AtmoSPHERE: Representing Space and Movement Using Sand Traces in an Interactive Zen Garden


Talks

Cited By

  • Designing for Microbreaks: Unpacking the Design Journey of Zenscape. Sixteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction.Rohit Ashok Khot, Jung-Ying (Lois) Yi, and Deepti Aggarwal. source | cite | search
  • Sand Playground: Designing Human-AI Physical Interface for Co-creation in Motion. Creativity and Cognition.Dina EL-Zanfaly, Yiwei Huang, and Yanwen Dong. source | cite | search
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