An Interactive Space for Connection
An immersive installation where every person becomes a glowing blob of colour, and colours mix, ripple and sound when people meet.
The brief
Build an interactive environment from scratch on the topic of proximity, where technology fosters connection and creates a shared experience in a physical space.
My role
A three-person team project. I designed and animated the blob, the central visual of the installation, and worked on the hand tracking; together we developed the concept, storyboard and final build in TouchDesigner.
Concept and sketches
We imagined a white room where the floor becomes art. Each visitor is a blob of colour that leaves a trail behind; distance and movement change the image, and lines, shapes and colours connect people who get close.
First sketches
Storyboard
We extended the idea to the whole room: the floor shows the present, the left wall the past (everyone who has been there), and the right wall the future (possible connections). As more people visit, the past becomes more and more colourful.
Past, present and future
As the idea was complex, we focused on the floor visual, the main interactive part: many colourful blobs with tangled trails and a ripple effect, as if moving through water.
Designing the blob
The blob had to feel alive, not like a digital dot. I built it from soft radial colour gradients that glow out into the dark, in saturated cyan, pink and violet, and explored different ways for two blobs to fuse, so that when people meet, their colours blend into a new one.
Making it follow people
Tracking people from above failed: they were only recognised when their face was visible, and the signal was noisy. After trying OpenCV, manual tracking and blob tracking, we chose the MediaPipe plugin for TouchDesigner, where a hand stands in for a walking person.
Hand tracking, and the blob with its trail
Result
The final installation became a playful game for two: each hand controls a glowing blob with a trail, and when they collide the screen bursts into a rainbow with a sound.
Reflection
We hit walls many times, and the team was great at helping each other through them. For me, the project opened a new medium: designing visuals that move and react, where colour, light and timing matter as much as shape. TouchDesigner is now one of my favourite tools to play with.