Project Kirini: An Interactive Projection Mapping Installation
Project Kirini is an autonomous interactive indoor exhibit, which utilizes the technologies of projection mapping and physical computing to highlight the cultural heritage of beekeeping in the Cycladic islands located at the Aegean Sea in Greece. It is based on beekeeping’s history, techniques and practices that have been used in the past and continue to exist in the present, as well as current testimonials.
The project idea is presented by an interactive documentary based on a large-scale projection installation with physical interaction. It has an educational and entertaining character. Users have the ability to interact with a room that is fully mapped with projections (walls, floor). The users are involved in various tests / tasks that are presented throughout the scenario. Each task is related to a specific part of the scenario and is dubbed by a voice over narration.
For the completion of this project we followed an iterative designmethodology, which can be described by the additional interrelated phases: Research and Examination/ Research and investigation (R&D), Design and Prototyping/ Design and prototyping (D&P) and Evaluation and Testing/ Evaluation and testing (E&T).
Project Kirini took part and was later presented at the international cultural heritage conference EuroMed Conference 2020, in Cyprus. The project was later selected to be published by the conference on the Springer Nature online research project platform.
You can read the paper here!
You can also watch the presentation here!
Through the research, we concluded that it would be useful to divide the information that we have gathered (from books, live testimonies, conferencies, etc), into three main chapters based on the timeline of beekeeping (ancient, medieval, present) and each member undertook to find further material for each ofthem.
Having completed the research, the team proceeded to design four different types of interaction with the system, to highligh all of the system's functions. It came down to the following four: Games, Trivia (Questions), Control Flow of storytelling, and Interacting with tangible objects. At the same time, the scenario of the flow of the exhibit was recorded in audio form by the team through voice acting and appropriate equipment. Each team member lent their voice to one of the three characters/narrators of the script.
Several test trials were later carried out, using various technologies such as Arduino, Bare Conductive Touch board and softwares such as Unity, Qlab and MadMapper. The staging and creation of the graphic designs of the exhibit were done with the use of Photoshop moving frames technique. The graphics represent real objects and locations, except for the section of Mythology in the chapter Ancient times.
As a final prototype, we simulated an entire room by creating 3 wooden frames with cloths, which would represent the walls of the said room. The contact points on the sails were created with copper threads which passed through one one side of the sail to the other, while in the control center, the corresponding contact points were created with Bare Conductive's conductive paint. On these points the user would be able to interact with the “Trivia” and “Narrative Flow Control” interactions. The size and shape of the control center resembled a modern bee and through it, users operated some basic functions of the system, as in the center of the structure each character/narrator was projected via a hologram.
The goal of the evaluation phase, was to locate pointsof the system which needed improvements by simulating the experience a person would havewith the final system. The data collected from this process, would allow us to evolve the system, to a form more ideal for users, as well as in the development of the interactions, their ease and functionalityof the overall construction.A total of 12 separate people took part in this processin form of 6 groups, since the idealnumber of people for its simultaneous use would be 2.
Although there were areas for improvement and pieces in the design that we had not calculated from the beginning, we managed to accomplish our main goals, which were raising awareness and informing users about beekeeping culture, while entertaining them throughout the exhibit. Having the results and coming up with our conclusions from the evaluations, we proceeded in the implementation of the final form of the exhibit.
Project Members
Ioakeim Nikolaos
Printezis Petros
Skarimpas Haralampos
