SXSW (South by South West ) is a set of festivals/conferences relating to music, interactivity and film that takes places in Austin, Texas every year. The interactive installation StreamMeUp was showcased this year and seemed to have quite an impact on the conference goers. The main idea behind it was to discuss about where the advancements of technology can lead us to a society.

Created in collaboration between Microsoft Studio and an impressive team lead by artist and acting Technical Director James George—with art direction and design by Something Savage studio—the unbranded science fiction–inspired installation was a response to what was essentially an emerging technology-based art commission. With the help of four Kinects and a virtual reality headset, conference goers were given the opportunity to see a digital transmission of themselves on a series of far off planets. “It’s like a Vine, for aliens,” joked George.

It uses four calibrated camera paired with Kinect (motion sensing input device mainly used on the xBox) sensors, which capture a small amount of time of action by a group of people. Each person is then teleported into a virtual world. Users are then given the Oculus Rift which allows them to explore the world and interact with other users. From early videos this looks incredible.

“I’m all about mixing generative art and code with figurative work,” says James George the creator. “I want to be like a figure painter with code. That’s why a 3D scanner to me is really powerful, because it turns people into data that I can manipulate.” By tweaking the code, George is able to create an abstract yet highly expressive representation of the human form. George achieved the effect by writing all the camera calibration and code in openFrameworks, which allowed him to take advantage of the new open source KinectCommonBridge library he helped develop while serving as the first artist-in-residence at Microsoft Research.

You can read the full article here at coolhunting.com