Be Your Own Souvenir!

_This proposal aims to connect street users, arts and science, linking them to under-laying spaces and their own realities. The installation was enjoyed during two weekends in January 2011 by the tourists, neighbours of La Rambla and citizens of Barcelona, a city that faces a trade-off between identity and gentrification, economic sustainability and economic growth. 
_This shapes through a technological ritual where the audience is released from established roles in a perspective exchange: spectator-performer, artist-tourist, observer-object. 
_The user becomes the producer as well as the consumer through a system that invites him/her to perform as a human statue, with a free personal souvenir as a reward: a small figure of him/herself printed three-dimensionally from a volumetric reconstruction of the person generated by the use of three structured light scanners (kinect).
_The project mimics the informal artistic context of this popular street, human sculptures and craftsmen, bringing diverse realities and enabling greater empathy between the agents that cohabit in the public space.


_Dataflow
All the software used in this project is free and open. Custom software has been developed using openFrameworks and openKinect in order to produce a tunable full 360 degree point cloud. Using a midi controller, the three differents input pointclouds (3 Kinects) can be adjusted in space and resolution. The resulting combined point cloud is processed by Meshlab to produce a watertight mesh reconstruction (Poisson reconstruction). Skeinforge takes the mesh, previously cleaned up through Blender (in order to replace the bottom basement, and insert specific structural elements), and outputs a gcode file, which can feed a cnc machine (Rapman 3.1).


_Special thanks to
Ramon Parramon for mentoring the project with wise ideas
Dolors Juarez and Antònia del Río, for all their tough paper work and support
Dago for his help and kindness
Marta Vilardell for being patient
Carles F. Julià for his knowledge and help with oF
Yang02 for his help and interest

Yeasayer _ Ambling Alp

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