[ISEA2015] Artist Talk: Tatsuya Ishikawa — Where Virtual Image is Formed

Artist Statement

“Where Virtual Image is Formed” is an art performance using kinect hacking. In front of the performer, there is a kinect capturing point clouds. In the back, a moving image of the point cloud is projected. In the movie, a camera in a virtual space goes round the farthest object from the kinect. When the performer stands in front of the kinect, the virtual camera goes round the point cloud of the performer. The sound the viewer hears is white noise that is filtered depending on the distance between the kinect and the farthest object. When the performer turns a Fresnel lens to the kinect, a part of the point cloud is split from the rest. It’s because a kinect is getting depth data by projecting infrared rays so it is able to hack kinect with a lens that refracts infrared rays. The kinect misrecognizes the object behind the lens is farther than it really is. The farther the distance between lens and the object, the farther the object is recognized from the kinect. The point cloud presents the distorted image captured by the kinect.
“A Virtual image is an image formed when the outgoing rays from a point on an object always diverge. The Image appears to be located at the point of apparent divergence.” (Wikipedia, Virtual image) It is just an image, but it looks as if a real object were there. And it is same for a kinect. Usually, a kinect scans real space and makes a point cloud into virtual space. However in this case, the virtual image is scanned as if it were a real object and then a point cloud is made into virtual space. That is, the virtual image and the real object are changed into the same level. By kinect hacking (with lens), we can know spatial relationship between a virtual image and a real object.

  • Tatsuya Ishikawa (Japan) is a video artist, programmer, and performer. Creating art performances and short films based on the theoretical background of mathematics and physics. Recent works include a performance using a kinect, a short film using cycloid curves, an application using an algorithm for the traveling salesman problem, etc. Studying at Graduate School of Film and New Media, Tokyo University of the Arts, Japan. tatsuya-ishikawa-work.tumblr.com