Reactive
Reactive is a live video installation that amplifies a user's movements with exploding particle systems in a virtual space.

Life Enhancement
Reactive changes the way we visualize digital images and interact with computer-generated art. In feeding off the unpredictable shapes of human behavior, Reactive asks us to look at our (increasingly digital) selves in a fresh way.

Vision
Inspired by Karl Sims' "Particle Dreams," Reactive is an art piece that questions how we define, deconstruct, and display digital images. It is my hope that artists and technologists alike will take these questions with them as they develop and create future work.

Goals
The goal of this project was to create an engaging, interactive artwork. Specifically, I wanted the artwork's interaction to be simple, playful, and beautiful.

Innovations
Traditionally, a digital image is viewed as a matrix of pixels, each with its own RGB color. The software for Reactive takes a digital image from a video camera and allows the pixels to live not only in their proper orientation (as particles on a grid), but to move freely in a virtual space. If viewers remain still, their images come into focus (as the "pixels" remain in their proper orientation). As viewers moves, however, the particles are released from the grid, and the sensation is that of wiping away one's image.

Reactive Web Site

Presentation
Wednesday, 11 August
10:30 am - 12:15 pm
Room 404AB

Contact
Daniel Shiffman
New York University
daniel.shiffman@nyu.edu