LAB: MadMapper

Whenever the Tech team was in between projects at Second Story, we spent time in our workshop space, affectionately called “The Lab”. This was our time to experiment with new technologies and novel uses of tried & true technologies, or to create small-scale capability-showcase experiences in collaboration with one of our excellent designers. I experimented with technologies such as Tanvas, BrightSign, WebGL, RFID, and Nanoleaf. One of my favorite Lab projects that I worked on was the MadMapper experience.

This Lab project combined two existing lab experiments into one cohesive experience: a generative particle animation built in Unity and a “touch bar” – a wood bar with different capacitive materials across it that output a range of values when touched. I first created a basic texture in the projection mapping software MadMapper, and mapped it to a small hexagonal prism we had lying around from a previous prototype.

Next I built a larger version of the hexagonal prism from foamcore. I projection-mapped the generative animation onto the foamcore prism. with MadMapper and programmed the output values of the capacitive materials on the touch bar to correspond to the parameters of the animation, such as color, speed, and particle lifetime. This was the result: