Way back into childhood
by CHEUNG So Sum
Nowadays, people become less zealous towards others because of the advancement of science and technology. People mainly use smartphones or other IT products to contact with friends and strangers. The basic communication between people becomes lesser and lesser. Lesser facial expression and emotional feelings can be expressed through face-to-face. However, let’s think about our childhoods, when we were still a kid, we could chat and play with other kids happily even we didn’t know each other! Why people become more bashful to communicate with other people when they grow up? They should know that the easiest way to know others is by face-to-face communication, but not technology. The well development of IT products seems to be a big obstructor for people to understand this fact.
Because of this phenomenon, I have conceived a project. I call it “Way back into childhood”. The aim of this project is to let people understand that the best communication skill is already given to us when we are born. It is inherent and needs not to learn. It is our action. The project will be very interesting and unprecedented since I will use the high-tech IT skills and tools to let audiences learn to control their movement of hands and feet to communicate with others. In the real world, people always learn to control and use new technology to improve their life quality. But, in my project, what audiences could do actually is to use high-tech technology to taste how to use action and facial expression, these kinds of basic skills, to communicate with others. The message behind is mainly opposite to the real life. This is the most funny and meaningful parts of my project.
Now, let’s talk about how to produce this artwork. “Way back into to childhood” is an interactive work. This artwork will be set up in a room with large empty space. The room will be decorated as a baby room. Inside, there will have two stages on both left and right sides of the room. On the ceiling of the room, four high resolution cameras and two 3D projectors would be set up. And for the stage, three sides of motion sensors will be set up on the floor to detect feet movement. Also, each time, two audiences could be taken part in this interactive work while others are watching. They may need to wear a HMDs with tiny size digital camera, which is to detect audience’s facial expression, and also a vest with power gloves, which is to detect audience’s arm and hand motion.Here is the structure of the stages and the device set-up of the audience’s body.
When two audiences are all standing on each side of the stage, the system will be started. Two three-dimensional babies will be showed in front of the audiences’ stages. It means that they are standing for the audience who is standing behind them. At that time, what audience could see in the HMDs is the view in the baby’s eyes. He would see that the other baby is standing in front of him, just like he actually is the baby. That’s why my project is called “Way back into childhood”. The tiny size digital camera will detect the facial expression of the audience’s face and the high resolution cameras will also start projecting infra-red lights on the vests and gloves on audiences’ bodies. When the people start moving their steps and arms, not only the motion sensors on the stages will capture the movement of their feet, but also the cameras will capture the reflections of light back from the audiences’ body. Then, all the data will send to the computer and the projector will project the variation of each part to change the baby’s movement and facial expression at once. When audience tries to move his steps forward, the baby then will walk forward. Audience can move as they like to let two babies communicate with each other, like smiling, shaking hands, etc. It would be a very fantastic experience for them to use high-tech technology to do this funny thing.
Actually, this artwork is a very valuable project that should be produced. Because of the well development of IT products, people reply on the smartphones and computers to communicate with others too much. They even forget their basic skills to understanding others. People no longer get in touch with their friends and strangers face-to-face. The society becomes much more emotionless because less and less people communicate with others by using their voice and body expression─the inherent communication skills. It is time for them to wake up to reality. By using the latest science and technology, what they always reply on, to produce this artwork and let them use the high-tech device to learn the basic communication skills again. It may be quite satirical, but it’s also funny.