Most 'virtual reality' helmets plunge users into an unreal video-game world - but a new version mixes the unreal into the real world in a 'living dream'.
The helmet only works in St Johann's Park in Basel, Switzerland - but wearers explore a mixture of the 'real' park, seen via cameras, and 3D illusions created by computers, including ghostly, glowing grass, surreal insects and strange visions in the sky.
Lifeclipper is an entirely new kind of entertainment, plunging users into parallel worlds using a high-powered computer backpack.
The lifeClipper project is a game-like, interactive new media artwork implemented with immersive augmented reality technology (AR) in St Johann's Park in Basel, Switzerland.
The system runs on a Windows 7 computer in a backpack, and shows users a 'world' made of a mixture of the real - seen through head-mounted cameras - and the unreal, created by computers.
It's controlled via an iPhone.
The computer imagery was inspired, its creators say, by films such as Independence Day and Avatar, as well as surreal artists such as Rene Magritte.
Surreal 3D effects 'swoop in' from the skies, which are a mix of the real and a strange 'cosmos' hovering above the park.
'An enormous, entire abstract cosmos surrounds the park plateau,' say its creators, 'Whilst at times it is barelyvisible through the sky, during certain climate phases it becomes the main reference system in an almost virtual world.'
The terrain of the real and virtual parks are almost the same, which allows users to navigate without falling over. But surreal features such as ghostly, glowing grass 'grow around' users if they stand in one place.
Insects and fish-like creatures float around explorers of the park
No comments:
Post a Comment