Who hasn’t experienced FOMO—the “Fear of Missing Out,” or the fear of missing out on something? You get invited to an event but don’t really feel like going. After mulling it over for a while, you drag yourself there because you don’t want to miss out—but looking back, you realize you didn’t miss out on nearly as much as you’d imagined. /_holofear lets you experience this phenomenon firsthand by presenting an installation that depicts a trendy party which becomes increasingly boring and lonely the closer you get to it. Step by step, the spectacular celebration turns out to be unspectacular after all. As soon as the viewer moves away, the mood at the hologram party picks up again, and with it the desire to be part of the action—in other words, FOMO increases. This interaction with the installation makes FOMO experienceable.
Jolanda Abasolo was responsible for the technical aspects of the project—specifically, the interaction between the image, the sound, and the viewer. How does the computer determine the viewer’s distance? Which sensors are suitable for this purpose? Which programs can process such data in real time? And so on. An infrared camera from a Kinect for Windows was used to measure the viewer’s distance from the installation. Using a JavaScript-based OSC interface, this data was then transmitted to the program vvvv. The videos and audio are embedded within this program and are then cross-faded using the OSC data. This results into a smooth transition between the different stages of the /_holofear installation.
Credits:
Jolanda Abasolo
Julian Köppl
Xaver Haiden
Leonhard Schönstein