ICHIM (Part 2)

Another item at ICHIM I thought was especially interesting was Me-Ror v.2 (Vadim Bernard). Here, the user sits in a booth and evidently moves a hand about: This installation gives an account of a research on a prospective setting for the video image. By combining an infra-red camera and an infra-red source placed in the same axis, it is possible, by filtering the visible light, to obtain an image in levels of gray where the light intensity of the image is a function of the depth of the scene. The closer the filmed object is, the more it is lighted up. In addition one films the same scene, but this time in color. By combining the two images captured in a single flowing video, one obtains a new format of video to four layers : three layers for color (RVB) and a layer for the depth (3D). This technology was, IIRC, used by the USAF back in the early 1980's to analyze stationary images for depth.

This was an idea I had had long ago, of future interfaces in which a user moves a hand through a hologram, such as a Munsell Color Space, and the computer reads the motion of hand and eye. There are many implications of this sort of interface, one of which is the inversion of space; instead of the future PDA user being spacially confined to the tiny device she is using, the device uses (say, holographic technology to) project object and response-observation into whatever space the user needs.