The Sensorium was a project funded by Sephora and Firmenich, installed in the meat-packing district in New York from October 7th to November 27th 2011. The Sensorium could be described as a “scent museum,” with six separate rooms. My main responsibility was an installation in the fifth room called "Lucid Dreams," executed with the Department of the 4th Dimension in LA, architect Elena Manferdini, and media artist Justin Lui.
The "Lucid Dreams" Team:
Creative Director, Matt Checkowski,
Executive Producer, Ron Cicero
Interactive Lead Designer, Gautam Rangan
Physical Designer, Justin Lui
Physical Lead Designer, Elena Manferdini
Content Lead Designer, Ken Pelletier
Sound Designer, Patrick Cicero
Soldering and Technical Assistance, Kevin Haywood, Yoko Nakano, Steve Ziadie.
Lucid Dreams features 4 adjacent interactive sculptures designed to create a dream-like, synesthetic experience for the visitor. The exhibit is a reactive environment that changes as the visitor smells the perfumes. I worked to prototype and construct the installation over two months. I developed the sensor system and software to visualize the sound of the visitor breathing as he or she inhales the perfume. I used the minim sound library to process the audio input and identify the sound and shape of a sniff.
Lucid Dreams received a Gold Pencil at the One Show Design Awards,an In-Book Slice at the D&AD professional awards, a Nomination for Technological Breakthrough at the FiFi awards, an Award for Spatial Design at the AICP Next Show, and a Notable Mention in Interaction for the Core 77 International Design Awards.
"Making Of" the Sensorium.
The beautifully designed perfume flower, designed by Elena Manferdini. Because it was 3d printed, I had the liberty of providing exact specs for the various sensors I embedded in the structure. So they fit very nicely! Photo by Justin Lui
Me in the studio explaining why Matt doesn't need to worry so much. Photo by Justin Lui.
Photo by Matt Checkwowski
Photo by Matt Checkwowski
A screenshot of my processing app using minim that recognizes the shape and sound of sniff. It worked surprisingly well.
I also designed these little circuits (not that complicated) that received the signals from the sensors and fed it into the computer, which was running a Unity3d project to drive reactive animations. I made this whole system, which is pretty similar to the system I made for the "One" project. Kevin Haywood, Steven Ziade, and Yoko Nakano helped solder these boards. Thanks guys!
