Tactile traces pecorari ivan_report_2010

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Tactile Traces ! ! !
TACTILE TRACES Project Report Ivan Pecorari
! ! ! ! Final

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Domus Academy | Master Course in I-Design 2010

Project Leader | Massimo Banzi

Assistant | Renzo Giusti

Museum as a Platform

TACTILE TRACES
Final report | Ivan Pecorari

14 November 2010, Milan
Outline | This document has been prepared as Project Report for the Master Course in I-Design according to the brief
of the Project Leader. This Project Report also includes a digital presentation and a body of work/sketches

Tactile Traces ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Final Project Report Ivan Pecorari

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
I.ABSTRACT/ RATIONALE / KEY-WORDS....................................................................4
1. INTRODUCTION.........................................................................................................5
1.1FRAMEWORK

1.1.1 CONTEXT
1.1.2 OBJECTIVE

2. PROJECT DESCRIPTION...........................................................................................9
2.1 DESIGN SOLUTION.........................................................................................................9
2.1.1 TRACKING
2.1.1.1 THE KEY TO ACESS: THE BRACELET
2.1.1.2 UNCONSCIOUS CHECK-IN.
2.1.2.3 CONSCIOUS CHECK-IN
2.1.2 STATION....................................................................................................................12
2.1.2.1 GENERAL DISPLAY
2.1.2.2 TOUCH IT INSTALLATION
2.1.2.3 EDUTAINMENT STATION
2.1.2.4 WORKSHOP STATION
2.1.2.5 LIFE OF BERROCAL STATION
2.1.3 TYPOLOGY OF USER-GENERATED METADATA OUTPUT.................................................17
2.1.4 PERSONAL COLLECTION CATALOGUE
2.1.5 ANNUAL YEAR BOOK
2.2 RESEARCH..............................................................................................................19
2.2.1 NEW TRENDS IN THE MUSEUM
2.2.2 SCULPTURE AS AN IDENTITY AND EXPLORATION INSIDE THE WORLD OF ART

2.2.3.1 INDOOR LOCALIZATION

2.2.3.2 GESTURE AND ANOTHER TRACKING.

2.2.3.3 HAPTIC.
2.2.3.4 PERSONAL CATALOGUE DATA VISUALIZATION

2.3 PROCESS................................................................................................................22
2.4 DETAIL & TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT..............................................................26
3.CONCLUSIONS...............................................................................................................27
4.REFERENCES................................................................................................................ 28


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I.ABSTRACT/ RATIONALE

This project aims to develop a system around the visitor experience of the museum Ber-
rocal in Villanueva de Algaidas, Malaga,Spain.
With the intention to highlight and unfold the deep identity of Berrocal sculptures, I de-
veloped a modular system around every exhibited artworks. The system is composed of
four main stations: General Display, Edutainment, Workshop, Life of Berrocal, each one
of these stations explore contents by mean of specific interaction modalities. The set-up
is flexible: according to the sculpture, different stations are available. The identity of an
art piece is provoking; it changes and is modified by visitors' action inside the exhibition
space in a sort of continuous dialogue that leaves behind traces of human
passage. This system is intended to track and record these traces, as a complement to
the visit and to personalize the content delivered to the visitor. Moreover, the system al-
lows visitors to touch the sculpture, in order to discover where their tactile interest lies
and to preserve the authentic sculpture's purpose to be an haptic artwork.

II.KEY-WORDS

TRACE
HAPTIC
SEDIMENTATION
PATINA
TRACKING


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1. INTRODUCTION

1.1FRAMEWORK
1.1.1 CONTEXT
THE MUSEUM IN THE FUTURE:
A BALANCE BETWEEN CONTENTS AND VISITOR ACTIVITY

There are many different definitions of Museum and several reasons to set up an exhibi-
tion space. Starting from the old-fashioned way of thinking of a museum as a private
collection of important, rare and eccentric things, such as a Wunderkammer, up to the
most advanced online proposal like, for example, the ongoing open platforms such as
Rhizome. The collection could be composed by historical relics of a civilization or a
celebration of one single genius artist.
However, on the cultural market competition is tough and, apart from the traditional
large scale museum, which dominates the market, opening a brand new museum is a
serious challenge whose main concern is how to reach the audience and how to trans-
form into a trusted community that share values with the specific cultural institution.
“The focus of attention is no longer the collection, but the visitor.” is a quote of
Erik Schilp, CEO at Naational Historisch Museum, Netherlands, that summarizes very
well the new tendency. The magnetic importance of the pieces shown in the museum
still attracts visitors but they aren’t enough, as visitors have become, under the influence
of new media and technology, more informed and demanding, which means they have a
greater appetite for accurate and interesting information. The new technology environ-
ment also produces a massive transformation in the perception of reality: everything has
to be more interactive and more flexible, ready to be modified and customized. The visi-
tor would like to transform himself into active player.
The perfect mix is a balance between contents and visitors’ activity. A balance involving
an adequate combination of digital and physical media types, in order to create a more
coherent and compelling experience along the exhibition pathway.
For these reasons, the decision that was taken by the Fundacion Escultor Berrocal to
plan a complex and complete museum hub around the artworks of the sculptor Miguel
Berrocal is an ambitious project that needs a strong design reflection and a coherent
strategic plan that will resonate with the main trends emerging in the curatorial field.
The system is structured in several places, such as :


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ARTIST WORKSHOP

BERROCAL MUSEUM

SCULPTURE GARDEN

BIRTHPLACE HOUSE

MUSEUM HOUSE

FRIENDS OF BERROCAL ASSOCIATION

A platform which would document, collect and preserve the artist’s work, as claimed by
the foundation statute, needs the active contribute of the visitors. Also the decision to
locate the museum in the Andalusian town of Villanueva de Algaidas, the artist’s birth-
place, could appear an extreme and unsuccessful position which should anyway be
transformed into a potential looking to the unique “genius loci” of the place.
First of all who is Miguel Berrocal? What made this artist so special?
Miguel Berrocal was a great Spanish Sculptor, popular for his puzzle sculptures. Most of
his sculptures are made up of several pieces, like a complex engine, and assembled
with a meticulous work. He was a protagonist of the artistic scene of the second half of
the 20th century and he enjoyed tight connection with a rich network of professional (
gallerists; curators ) and all the artists of that revolutionary century.
Throughout his artistic research and life, can be identified Seven main streams

1. SCIENCE AS INSPIRATION
2. EMPTY SPACE
3. DISASSEMBLY
4. INTERACTIVE ESTHETICS
5. THE TECHNIQUES
6. THE MULTIPLES
7. THE PROJECTS

The problem setting activity I carried out to learn better Knowledge in the museum field
that helped me in isolating for the present project 5 areas of investigation witch consti-
tuted primary focus on my investigation:
• The need for a Museum to have a flexible, scalable easy-to-repurpose exhibition system
• Understanding the visitors behaviors
• Enhance the consciousness of the tactile dimension
• Track, record and collect the various activity of the visitors inside the museum
• Connecting the visitors with the foundation after the visit.


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1.1.2 OBJECTIVE
During the exploration of this subject, this famous quote of Berrocal always came to my
mind: How awake to the sculpture are people ?

The ultimate objective of this project is to find an answer to this question and to create a
balance between contents and visitor’s activity. To address these requirement I would
like to create a flexible system for managing contents and interactions around the sculp-
tures to organize the contents and places I selected four main categories:

• MUSEUM BERROCAL / ARTWORK

• LIFE OF BERROCAL

• EDUTAINMENT

• WORKSHOP/PROJECT

With this kind of categorization visitors have got a sort of compass and different direc-
tions to organize their visit accordingly. On the basis of visitors preferences you can or-
ganize the visit, create your own composition of the exploration according to your feel-
ing, objectives and time. Every Museum’s authorities would like to track and record the
paths of every visitors and that is also part of my objectives. Not only physical naviga-
tion their but also the collection of all the sediments and traces that are left by the users.
My goals, through the collection of that user generated meta-data, are to enrich the visi-
tors experience, predict their pathway and ultimately design the exhibition layout based
on the collected data. The whole contents exhibited would be augmented with the visi-
tors contributions: their own intelligence, wisdom and experience, at both conscious
and unconscious level so as to give more unexpected and fresh point of view on the art
pieces. In order to enhance and collect those active traces I plan to design a sensing
and feedback system during the interactions with the stations and also a memento for
the post-visit phase. The visitors feedback collection is a palette of small interactive
acts: ranging from assemble and disassemble -even partially- a sculpture, replace and
trace an artwork with everyday things, tag the artworks and deposit voice recordings of
memory connections to the period of the ideation and casting of the sculpture.

In the end what is making particular, unique the sculptor’s art work? What is the most
important experience you can have during the visit of a museum full of sculptures? The
answer I’am proposing is mostly informed by the observation that the sculptures stimu-
late mainly the haptic sense and of course the feeling of a tridimensional volume im-
merse in our bright and dense world.


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In order to achieve an enhanced consciousness of touch first of all we need to modify
the established behaviors of visitors and museum. Artworks are commonly considered
as sacred pieces and nobody is allowed to touch them. This change in attitude can be
achieved though different strategies that i would like to explain in depth in the design
solution section. It becomes then to let the visitors know that they are allowed to touch
the sculptures.

Looking at things from the point of view of the museum management, the collection of
user-generated metadata is also very important. They can be examined to gain insight
on the visit patterns and receptions of contents directly generated by Berrocal and the
fresh and dynamic contents left as contributes by the audience.

The focus of attention is no longer the collection, but the visitor.
Erik Schilp


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2. PROJECT DESCRIPTION

2.1 DESIGN SOLUTION
2.1.1 TRACKING

The tracking system inside the museum is the principal administration tool to collect the
visitors’ spatial data and, at the same time, regulate the visitors flow in the galleries and
their interaction. Indoor locative services are the emerging opportunity especially in pub-
lic places such as a museum. Through that it is possible to design a set of tools to better
understand the visitors’ behavior and thus give them back benefits and opportunities.
The visitors sensing system is based on the concept of a check-in at two levels :
unconscious (to detect presence) and conscious (to trigger interactivity), set with differ-
ent ranges of activation. As long as the museum management knows which sculptures
the visitors are interested in, they can supply personal contents such as complementary
catalog entries connected to those preferences.An easily implementable and cheap way
to achieve that purpose is to use a Rfid-based system: ( tags and readers ).


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2.1.1.1 THE KEY TO ACESS: THE BRACELET

To enter and visit a museum galleries you always need some evidence that you have
paid for admission or at least you have passed through the entrance. The ticket is the
physical proof of that.
The ticket should be also an identification tool and, by means of proper technology, a
device for locating and tracking visitors in space and time. I would also want to use it to
establish simple set of gestures for the conscious check-in necessary to interact with
the stations. Tickets are usually made of paper and are easy to forget in your pocket, for
this reason I decided to replace them with a personal item: a bracelet.
The bracelet embedded 2 technologies necessary for presence and movement detec-
tions: Rfid tags and infrared led diode. When being warn, the bracelet has a very easy
to understand connection to the hands, which are the main attention focus in a system
based on haptic interaction. A bracelet also contains the few profile data, such as name
and email, that are required for registration to create an unique visitor’s ID upon enter-
ing the galleries

2.1.1.2 UNCONSCIOUS CHECK-IN

To address the issue connected with visitors detection I resolved to implement a track-
ing by point, a discrete system of localization in order to avoid and remove the ‘noise’
and non-significant data of other analog systems.
For this purpose I design an area around the the artwork with an average radius of 5
meters, depending on the spatial and strategic limits. Every time you enter that area, the
bracelet / ticket, that you have always to wear, send an input to the long range Rfid
reader device positioned on celling. So, without you knowing, you are already checking
inside the area around that specific artwork. In the end it’s just a way to certifying your
presence in the proximity of one of the works of art exhibited.


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2.1.2.3 CONSCIOUS CHECK-IN

All the different stations located around the sculpture can be activated to interact with
them and thus collect the traces of our passage just using again your bracelet.
On the sculpture podium or on the stations themselves a special symbol, looking like a
hand print, signals that the installation can be activated by placing your hands on it.
A Rfid reader set to detect only short range signals is hidden behind the hand symbol
and the Rfid tag on the bracelet triggers it while within a 10 cm range.
I explicitly decided to include a set constraints in order to transform the second-level
check-in into a conscious decision made even more through a theatrical gesture neces-
sary to activated the station.


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2.1.2 STATION

The project is composed of a group of modular physical stations positioned around the
sculpture, each one catering to different contents and responding to different interaction
modalities: The station categories are connected to the principal subdivision of the contents

• GENERAL DISPLAY
• TOUCH IT INSTALLATION
• EDUTAINMENT STATION
• WORKSHOP STATION
• LIFE OF BERROCAL STATION

Every Station, as far as content is concerned, is color-coded for easy identification. I as-
signed one color that connects a specific installation with a kind of content to deliver :
black, orange, cyan and green respectively to: general display and touch it installation,
edutainment, workshop, life of Berrocal. The Museum’s management can choose differ-
ent setups, according to the needs and identity of each sculpture. Many different ar-
rangement can be implemented ranging from having all the stations around the sculp-
ture to just one of them, if needed. System flexibility is also convenient in terms of inter-
nal disposition, general space arrangement, spatial problems and other opportunities.

2.1.2.1 GENERAL DISPLAY

Because information goals are a primary concern in museums, the general display is
central to the museum ecosystem. It’s a kind of wall’s partition shaped in several sizes,
depending on the size of relative sculpture and with two active surfaces : front and back.
The front mainly shows just information such as name of the artworks, date of creation
and a short description in a neutral color layout to prevent interfering with the sculpture
itself. The “touch it” monitor is placed on the left part of the display and shows the result
of the interaction in the near by installation. The rear side offers to the visitor the possi-
bility to tag the related art piece. You can either choose to touch an already assigned
tag to make it bigger or type a new one; the most touched item appears to be bigger. In
order to be able to tag the sculpture the visitor need to check-in with your bracelet.


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The main interaction feature in my proposal is the TOUCH IT installation.It is also in the
most representative element of the whole ecosystem I suggested to development
around each sculpture. First of all you have to check in the sculpture podium itself so as
to activate a recording of your touch. The installation allows visitor to touch the artwork,
as you like, but with a time limit of 30 sec. Your touching performance is tracked, re-
corded and instantly transformed into visual traces displayed on the installation screen
similar to brushstrokes overlaid on the sculpture. These traces are shown in the general
display to allow a visual evidence of your actions. Above that individual representation
another window reveals the aggregate result, through a defined gradient, of the collec-
tive touching action during a set interval of time.
I decide to use the thermographic gradient in a scale to cyan/blue, which means no
touch is mapped to a white color, then for the most touched color will vary through dif-
ferent shade of yellow-orange-red.
In this way it is possible to have a graphic overview of a implicit “rating” visitors prefer-
ences during a whole year of activity of the museum: would then appear to be “hot”,
while the least touched would appear as being “cold”.
Installation encourages visitors to touch the art and make them aware of doing that in
order to explore a sculpture more deeply and thoroughly.


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2.1.2.3 EDUTAINMENT STATION

The station consist of a multi-touch display, which enables up to four users at the same
time to interact; the screen is embedded in a rectangle-shaped table. When it is not ac-
tivated it displays a show reel of the previous visitors’ generated contents.The main pur-
pose of the station is to engaged the visitor in a playful collage game replacing and trac-
ing an image of one sculpture with a palette of funny an unusual elements, such as
fruits or buttons. Similarly to a contemporary Arcimboldo the visitors should try to use
their own imagination to produce a new interpretation of the works of Berrocal.
The software inside the station even allows to play with the portrait of the visitor, taken
by a hidden photo camera in the multi-touch screen.
After the work is done it is possible to save it and have an instant print of it in A4 format.
This creative activity has a special purpose specially target to young users: first it is
connected to the experience of making a personal piece of “art”, following some strate-
gies similar to Berrocal is way of designing, and second it reflects the idea of identity
and the kaleidoscopic representation of it through small and unusual elements.


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2.1.2.4 WORKSHOP STATION

One of the key-words that emerge from the analysis of Berrocal’s works is “disassem-
bly” and of course the opposite: assembly.
To build up a sculpture made as a tridimensional puzzle is a learning experience itself.
Through that it is possible to understand: proportion, the inside piece shape and hidden
structure of specific art piece. To create such a ‘creature’ a complex and deep design
work is needed, which in the case of Berrocal is expressed in thousand of sketches,
technical drawings, prototypes and models.This station shaped as an old well shows all
that contents in a round-shaped screen.In a continuos loop the ancient parts emerge
like hidden traces. The station base, like a wardrobe, is fitted with different layers of
drawers, depending on the complexity and the importance of the related artwork.
The knobs are the buttons to navigate trough the contents: the lower drawers, the less
developed is the document showed. One touch on the knob reveals the content, an-
other hides it. When the visitors activated the station with the bracelet / ticket, the sys-
tem allows you to open the drawers and find inside the part of the sculpture.
Depending on your skills and quickness you should be able to assemble the artworks
displayed on the the screen. It’s also possible to play with the sculpture elements with-
out having to complete the puzzle: partial finding to create a new precarious equilibrium
that you can as usual document with a fourth view camera composition.
At the end this station makes visitors more aware of the underlying structure in each
sculpture and at displays the importance of every single piece itself.


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2.1.2.5 LIFE OF BERROCAL STATION

To understand an artist, his life is as important as it is his work. The cultural background
and the historical, geographical, and social context when the artwork was created help
to immerse yourself in that world. Because of this, you should become aware of the
personal and collective history around the sculpture.
This station through a sound installation helps you to achieve those goals.
The production years of the sculpture represent the main node around which it is possi-
ble to organize a cloud of contents.
Different handsets are hanging from the ceiling arranged in a circular constellation of
loud speakers. They broadcast different contents, ranging from anecdotes to historical
facts or radio recordings of that specific year.
The number of available handsets is varies according to the curatorial ratings of the
year considered.
The check-in by the life of Berrocal station, also allows visitors to leave their audio
comments in reply to a basic question: “what were you doing in 1979?”
The pre -set recording time for each audio message is limited to 30 sec.


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2.1.3 TYPOLOGY OF USER-GENERATED METADATA OUTPUT

During their visit to the museum every user produces different kinds of output, that are
sent through a closed wi-fi network to the general control tower for further analysis for
the personal catalogs and for other editorial issues and printed materials. The tracking
outcome is a set of data about position and time and with those is easy to recreate path visit.
The aggregation of location data through time should produce a map of the most used
path across the galleries, and its should also provide an overview of the behavior of the
whole museum population.
Every station surrounding a sculpture produce different metadata: images from the edu-
tainment and workshop, tags cloud from the general display and audio tracks from the
life of Berrocal station. All this information is stored in different folders categorized
through use ID and typology. The installation Touch It produces an original output: a
kind of overlaid texture mapping and a videoclip of the interaction in real-time.

2.1.4 PERSONAL COLLECTION CATALOGUE

After the visiting a museum it is usual to buy a catalogue of the exhibition for further ref-
erence but also as a memento to bring home, but besides hight quality and standard-
ized general contents provided by the museum organization, all the materials are inper-
sonal, related neither to the visit or the visitor. In order to avoid that and to generate a
personal unique reminder, I design an entire ecosystem capable to collect the user’s
preferences and traces with the final purpose of giving them back in a kind of visit diary:
the personal collection catalogue.
The level of detail of the contents is directly connected to the number and level of
check-ins: no check-in at all means just a small thumbnail of the artwork, title and cap-
tions, unconscious check-in transfers of contents in a full page layout for every sculp-
ture with description and photos. The conscious check-in creates two pages, different
for every station, full of user-generated contents and monographic contents.
The more you see and explore the richer is the report of the experience made. Of
course, every time there will be potentially a different output with different contents.
The cover of the catalog, similar to a family tree: it is a collage populated with the art-
work of the collection by which the visitors checked-in.
The format of this personal collection catalog should be both physical such as an A4
booklet and digital such as a PDF file.

2.1.5 ANNUAL YEAR BOOK

From the editorial point of view all the original documents: photo, sketches, technical
drawings and all the visitor generated contents should be used for compiling a kind of
annual year book, a publication that shows ‘the state of art’ of a year of activity of the
foundation and, in general, of the whole museum platform.
This kind of scientific analysis can be useful to attract new investors and, at the same
time, to design the future directions and to inform promotional strategies.


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2.2 RESEARCH

“As an artist I try to make things that people can believe in, that they can relate to,
that they can experience. You therefore have to show them as well as possible.”
Damien Hirst
The research that informed the present work spans across several topics between arts
and technology, trying to cover and touch different points of view concerning new trends
in curation, sculpture itself, tracking motion in closed space and finally the sense mostly
involved in this project: touch.

2.2.1 NEW TRENDS IN THE MUSEUM

After a fast check of what the main and most advanced cultural institutions are doing
nowadays, while always keeping in mind the scale and the objectives of the Fundacion
Escultor Berrocal, I’ve discovered some emerging themes and solutions in museum and
exhibition design:

• ACTIVE and INTERACTIVE: Creativity and participation by visitors is being fostered
and encouraged.

• FLEXIBLE: A better use of the physical environment and flexible interior design that
can
easily be repurposed for events / workshops / exhibitions and community use

• NETWORK AND ECOSYSTEM: Use of networks, physical and digital community to
spread an exhibition and experience and design an ecosystem around
the exhibition

• EXPERIENCE: Harnessing the learning by doing approach and embracing edutain-
ment by using games

2.2.2 SCULPTURE AS AN IDENTITY AND EXPLORATION INSIDE THE
WORLD OF ART
There are different issues emerging in the world of art and especially in sculpture as ex-
pression and manifestation of a fine art, that involve the identity and purpose of an art-
work nowadays.

“First was the image the point of arrival, nowadays it’s a starting point” is a quote of the
italian art critic Domenico Quaranta that explains pretty well an interesting aspect of
contemporary art. In other words, the objective of the art should be more oriented to
provoke a feedback or an interaction with others than to be an aesthetic untouchable
output. The audience of an artwork is not an audience anymore, it has become an ac-
tive player. In the same way, the main purpose of a cultural institution should be to use


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its heritage in order to raise some reactions from the visitors. The visitor takes on the
role of the author, combining personal decisions with the tools provided by the artist or
cultural institution so as to drive forward the creative design process. The artwork takes
the role of a magnet, a kind of pole and around all the other related contents . The more
the identity of the artwork is strong, the easier it is to create the network. I would like to
add, just to clarify my opinion, that it doesn’t matter so much if the crowd around the
sculpture generate just meta-data for information purpose or a new artwork itself. I leave
this kind of critical judgment to the more critically - savvy person.

As a Reference I really appreciate the works of Damien Hirst: ‘For the love of god’ ex-
hibit in Rijkmuseum, Amsterdam ( www.fortheloveofgod.nl ) as well as the entire phi-
losophy behind the 9/11 Memorial in New York especially the Lady Liberty: a crowd
sourced version of the Statue of Liberty. I also find the following work of Martin Watten-
berg and Fernanda Viégas very seminal: ‘Flashmap’ about data visualization and haptic,
especially for the TOUCH IT installation.

2.2.3 TRACKING
With all the emerging technology such as GPS and mobile web there has been an ex-
plosion of services, like navigation related to the idea of tracking in time and space.
Tracking doesn’t mean only locating but also recording and collecting all the aspects
connected to body and physicality, like gesture and touch. Transforming some action or
fact into digital, discrete worlds can open a lot of possibilities, of design opportunities for
sedimentation or manipulation of the data collected

If in the fields of outdoor localization there are very well known technologies and thou-
sands of applications and services, the indoor version is still an open and experimental
domain subject. First of all I did a lot of research on high - precision indoor localization
such as the system prototype developed by Nokia. I found that Indoor position-based
systems have high costs, complexity, administrative difficulties while still delivering lim-
ited accuracy, so obvious candidates in terms of availability and maturity of the technol-
ogy are RFID, Bluetooth and Wireless LAN. I choose to research deeper on Rfid be-
cause of the affordability of passive UHF tags and readers. So I discovered that with the
same technology I can implement two levels of check-in working from 10 centimeter up
to 5 meter distance.

2.2.3.2 GESTURE AND ANOTHER TRACKING
A new emerging field in the technology is the one that tries to track everything con-
nected to human body and behaviors: conscious gestures like for example raise an
hand, or unconscious ones like eye movement for a variety of purposes. In such an ex-
terminate world my focus was more on understanding which could be the tracking tech-
nologies and the gesture mostly fiting to the museum context. If we think that the audi-


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ence of a exhibition don’t normally have enough time to learn complex interfaces and
communication codes, it is clear that the more easy and natural the gesture is, the more
suitable it is to be tracked and used as a controller. For the Berrocal museum investigat-
ing touch gestures seemed to be the most promising direction. Instead of using complex
technology like capacity-touch screen, especially on a 3D surface as a sculpture, I sug-
gested to replacing a lot of complex software and hardware set-ups by only using a blob
recognition feature in computer vision software. I explored and tested all the most com-
mon used solution, understanding the pro and cons of each one.

2.2.3.3 HAPTIC
We have seen in all these years a progressive growth of the technology connected to
the touch such as multi-touch screens, but in the future of haptic interface we will see a
lot of incredible development to fit more and more in terms of feelings the tactile quali-
ties ranging from the possibility of having pressure sensible screen to the feature, via
electronic impulse to replicate fully properties of a surface: (a reconfigurable surface in
one moment raw and the following moment smooth). Those technologies will be open
to a range of uses from pure functional ones to entertainment, such as gaming inter-
faces and controllers.

Right from the beginning it was clear, from my point of view that the catalogue was an
strategic issue for an exhibition, particularly in as much as it is a memento of an experi-
ence that is usually not so well designed in terms of personalization and customization.
After the era of generic contents, the trends around the publishing domain are mainly
concerned on how to make the output personal and interesting for the individual.

There are many examples of applications that can achieve that objective: from Flip-
board, the world’s first “social magazine” to software as a service for creating books and
documents ready to be printed or just shared on the internet, such as Blurb or Issuu.
The consumer becomes clearly less passive and often an author and publisher himself.
He only needs tools for collecting what is important for him and a format designed to
make his documents look at their very best as well as the new semantic searching tools
to extract and categorize content from a variety of resource. We produce thousands of
data on virtually any subject everything and , in order to communicate that information
clearly and effectively, we crely on this strategy called: data visualization. Through
graphical devices data become more readable and can communicate their key-aspects
in a more intuitive way. For my purpose I have explored very well-known methods of
data visualization: from the scale gradient of temperatures in thermography to the rep-
resentation in a morphological and geographical way such as map collection of objects
like an atlas. All these graphic visualization methods will ware examined and taken into
account while designing the aggregate visualization of touch.


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2.3 PROCESS

All the thesis process was developed following two paths : one was related to the gen-
eration of the concepts, the second was characterized by a continuos research in the
field interested, identified by the concepts.
The first step of the process started with a deep research on Berrocal’ works and the
artist’s life to find out some unique and original key-aspects that could help me in the
definition of the concept. At the same time I also scanned the world of art and which,
nowadays, are the important cultural institution to be aware of the new ideas and trends
in those fields. It was clear right from the beginning that the best way to approach this
project was to try to create a kind of ecosystem around the idea of an artist’s exhibition,
in accordance with the title of the task: Museum as a platform. I came up with three
ideas/archetypes all revolving around museum and artwork environment.

SCULPTURE AS AN IDENTITY

FILL THE VOID

IMAGE AS A STARTING POINT

The first archetype, Sculpture as an identity, was developed in 3 concepts all aimed at
how to enrich and make the information display about an artwork original and unique:

GENOMA DISPLAY

This is a simple round display placed around every art piece. Like a gene-map, it shows
the information related to the sculpture organized in different categories; with a simple
gesture the visitor can delve more deeply into the contents, expanding the space for
every given category.


23

DIOGENE DISPLAY

Instead of having a normal audio-guide I imagined a visual-guide that looks like a torch.
This exploration tool enables you to reveal the information contents by pointing to the
sculpture with colored light. Every color is connected to different categories of informa-
tion. An information layer is overlaid on the sculpture like an augmented reality applica-
tion would do through a screen or visor.

100TH GOGGLES

Another way to reveal contents could be to multiply the point of views for watching at art
piece. That would be possible by using several displays. In this view, around the sculp-
ture there will be several screens hanging from the ceiling. Every visitor, while looking
though the screen, can choose the most interesting visualization as well as switch from
one visualization to another, such as x-ray, sections, piece by piece etc.

The second archetype, Fill the Void, is a metaphorical way of thinking on what happens
around the sculpture and which are the traces people left during a museum‘ visit. It was
development in two concepts:

POLLICINO

As in the fairy tale Little Thumbling (Pollicino) everybody leaves some traces after their
passage, so, in view of this, the main focus is to follow, trace, record, and organize the
traces left by the audience in a museum during their visit and, at the same time, give the
visitor the possibility to become an author: from interacting to generating a new artwork.
Some questions propelled the research on this domain: Is it possible to track a kind of
“elephant path” inside an indoor environment ? How to enlighten and give meaning to
the glaze formed on the sculpture? These questions were developed into more ad-
vanced concept developments.


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MUSEUM IN A SUITCASE

The suitcase is at the same time a metaphor of a tool-kit for exploring the exhibition and
a small museum package in a mobile space. I imagined that the museum should give
every visitor a visit kit with a photo camera inside, the torch of the “Diogene Display” as
a video-guide and a label printer. With those tools the audience can explore and interact
and leave comments inside the museum. After the visit the suitcase will become a small
museum itself to be brought home as a memento of the visit.

Image as a starting point is more a research on the evolution of an artistic identity and
on how the contributors from the “crowd” could potentially intervene to change it and at
the same time on how to generate a collective piece of art.

MISSING PIECE

Starting from a missing piece of a Berrocal’s sculpture, like a fossil femur of a T-rex, it is
possible to rebuild virtually all the artworks. The visitor becomes an archeologist, with
quest and mystery to be solved.

DATA SCULPTURE

The core of this concept is the transformation of the traces left by the visitor in a kind of data
sculpture in order to make evidence of the movements inside the museum. The scan of the
visitor’ body could also be used to generate an anthropomorphic and collective sculpture.

After some revision with our Project Thesis Leader, Massimo Banzi, and his assistant,
Renzo Giusti, I decided to move forward with the development of the tracking concept
( Pollicino ) My first objective was meant to track movement and behavior inside the
museum by using Rifid system. At the same time the idea of the modular stations came
into my mind. It was necessary for the visitors to interact with the artwork and leave
traces on it, therefore I designed different stations around every sculpture to attract
people in to engaging active with different modalities. I divided the contents in different
category and for every category I assigned one designed. This concept adjustament
was also needed to create an ecosystem to identify the visitors one by one. My first idea
was to use tan ordinary ticket but after some prototype experience I realized that it was
better to give visitors a more substantial item like a bracelet. Inside a bracelet I could
also embed the needed technologies for tracking. The first part of the system was ready
but what benefit would the visitors get in return? Why should they cooperate? The best
way to persuade them to collaborate is to give them some proof and feedback on their
work, so I decided to develop and transform the idea of the catalogue into a kind of per-
sonal diary of the visit, full of the traces left by the audience, therefore catering to a
closer relation covering all the experienced stages. The ecosystem is now complete
from the beginning until the end of the experience. What was again missing was a inter-
active experience that could characterize all the project : the TOUCH IT installation was
the answer. After a deep research on the touch world and on how to imitate and record
it, I decided to use a computer vision strategy instead of the full capacitive sensor, too
expensive, complex and ineffective on a metal sculpture.


25


26

2.4 DETAIL & TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT
I decide to focus more on the TOUCH IT installation and I will try to prototype it
How exactly the TOUCH IT work?
First of all, according to the museum system, you should activate the installation by just
placing your hand over the symbol of a handprint.
This movement activates the communication between the bracelet and the short dis-
tance Rfid reader hidden inside the podium. All the following actions are now sent via
Wi-Fi to the “control tower”. After the visitor starts to touch the sculpture, that action,
through a touch sensor, turns on at the same time an infrared video camera placed
above the sculpture. Simultaneously the symbol of the handprint turns red and, like a
counter, during 30 seconds of interaction it goes back to white passing through all the
gradient between red and white.
The camera is the main sensor of all the system and, through a computer vision soft-
ware, should be able to recognize and track some blobs ( complex shape ) produced by
the light of the infrared led diode enbedded inside the bracelet.
The software is also able to locate the center of those blobs and send the coordinates to
another software, such as Processing via the OSC (Open sound control) communica-
tion protocol. With those coordinates and their movement it is possible to transform the
touching hand of the visitor into a “brush” translating the center from the bracelet to the
hand. Now the visitor can paint on the sculpture: the visitor’s hand become a “mouse
controller” and all the movements are converted into kinds of brush record and can thus
be precisely recorded. Such traces are “projected” on the “atlas UV texture map” of the
3d model of the sculpture itself. This model, with the texture modified by the touch is
shown on the general display. On the same display you can also see the aggregate
data visualization: a collective representation of all the cumulative touches the sculpture
so far . The meta-data produced in the installation could also be used for designing
various data visualizations.“The greatest value of a picture is when it forces us to notice
what we never expected to see” is a quote take from the book: “ exploratory Data Analysis
by John W. Tukey, which very well explains what the power of a data visualization could be.


27

3.CONCLUSIONS
In this project I try to create a complete interactive ecosystem around a museum dedi-
cated to the Spanish sculptor Miguel Berrocal and to find a balance between contents
and visitors’ activity. I do believe that the future of every cultural institutions is closely
connected to how they will manage that balance. When someone visits a museum, they
would probably like to have a complete and enriching experience around the art’ world
and at the same time have the feeling they are really like authors themselves and con-
tribute to the growth of the institution as well as their own. The museum that I am trying
to design is not a pure participatory experience but is an hybrid between a guided expe-
rience and a personal experience, so the aim is not to create something together but to
enable the creation of something engaging personal imagination applied to the artwork
of Berrocal. For this reason, the installation TOUCH IT is central and representative of
all the system. At the end of the visit I place the personal catalogue so everything is col-
lected into a document, everything transforms itself into something that you can exhibit.
The work of Miguel Berrocal is unfortunately over but around it we can create a world of
user’s contribution and interesting derivate works

Let’s call it The haptic world of Berrocal


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4.REFERENCES


TOUCH

http://www.cypress.com/?rID=3475

http://www.cypress.com/?docID=13628

http://www.webcam-whiteboard.com/

http://www.uweschmidt.org/wiimote-whiteboard

http://www.cybernetyx.com/web/products/eyeris/

http://code.google.com/p/chrislib/

DIY SPHERICAL DISPLAY PLANS

http://hml.queensu.ca/node/302

http://blog.waag.org/

SCREEN CAPTURE PLUG-IN

http://v002.info/?page_id=4

CORE VISION

http://nuicode.com/projects/tbeta/files

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hTDH3CK1kU

PROCESSING

http://wiki.processing.org/w/Draw_to_off-screen_buffer

http://www.pixelnerve.com/processing/libraries/objimport/

http://ubaa.net/shared/processing/opencv/opencv_capture.html

PROCESSING+ LIVE + OPEN CV
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ncfnxr1DIY

GUI: controlP5 Processing's library
http://www.sojamo.de/libraries/controlP5/

http://www.sojamo.de/

http://www.superstable.net/interfascia/


29

2.2.1 NEW TRENDS IN MUSEUM

http://360.clicksuite.co.nz/post/INSIDE-YOUR-MUSEUM-AN-OUTSIDERe28099S-PERSPECTIVE-%28P
art-I-of-some%29.aspx

ART

http://benfry.com/

http://www.leejangsub.com/

http://www.generativeart.org/new/dpd.html

http://tomgerhardt.com/mudtub/

http://www.nextnature.net/tag/humane-technology/

http://www.bewitched.com/fleshmap.html

2.2.3 TRACKING

HERD TRACKING

http://www.taiga.net/satellite/

http://www.wildlifetracker.co.uk/

http://www.cheetahbotswana.com/tracking.php

http://www.fieldtripearth.org/index.xml

TRAFFIC

ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/aero/facet24.mov

http://richard.jones.name/google-hacks/google-cartography/google-cartography.html

http://www.mysociety.org/2006/travel-time-maps/

3D
http://www.flickr.com/photos/arenamontanus/268430405/sizes/o/in/set-72157594326128194/

BRACELET

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wristband

http://www.nme.com/news/readingleeds-festival/50091

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/theticket/2009/1127/1224259509420.html


http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/features/item/12145_Indoor_Location-Future_tech_fr.php


30

RFID GENERAL

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio-frequency_identification

RFID AT THE MUSEUM

http://www.archimuse.com/mw2009/papers/baldwin/baldwin.html

http://justgetthere.us/blog/archives/St.-Johns-Childrens-Hospital-Deploys-RFID-to-Protect-Children.html

http://www.gic-omegher.com/machines/taginnov.php

http://www.rfid-in-china.com/products_669_1.html

http://www.rfid-in-china.com/2008-08-25/products_detail_2119.html

http://www.fricknet.com/Products/SmartMark_RFID/SM_30D_FRAC_tag_with_RFID.html

LONG RANGE READER (UHF)

http://www.caen.it/rfid/syproduct.php?fam=mread&mod=A941

ANTENNA

http://www.caen.it/rfid/syproduct.php?fam=antenna&mod=WANTENNAX005

SHORT RANGE READER (HF)

http://www.elastic-rfid.com/cms/plugin/RfidCatalog/upload/files/HF-RFID-reader-desktop.pdf

SERIAL RS232

http://processing.org/reference/libraries/serial/index.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-232

RADIO FREQUENCY

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_spectrum

2.2.3.2 GESTURE AND ANOTHER TRACKING

EYES TRACKING

http://www.uxmag.com/technology/eye-tracking-the-best-way-to-test-rich-app-usability

2.2.3.3 HAPTIC
http://www.technologyreview.com/video/?vid=470

http://sciencestage.com/v/9309/virtual-touchpad-lets-you-scroll-in-thin-air.html


31

TACTILE SENSOR

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactile_sensor

TACTILE PRESURE SENSOR

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X-9IzPT8KQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hc5Kc47qOx8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UI4MD6nijM

http://sensorprod.com/video-gallery/

HIGH-SPEED TACTILE SENSING ARRAY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FCblZukiBQ&feature=related

ARTIFICIAL SKIN - TACTILE SENSOR

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQkC-gJGKmw&NR=1

HAPTICS BRINGS A PERSONAL TOUCH TO TECHNOLOGY

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10373923

TOSHIBA TACTILE FEEDBACK

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXITjLurof0

TOUCHY FEELY FUTURE FOR TECH USERS

HTTP://NEWS.BBC.CO.UK/2/HI/PROGRAMMES/CLICK_ONLINE/8697913.STM

HAPTIC COMPANY

HTTP://WWW.IMMERSION.COM/INDEX.HTML

http://ipoupyrev.wordpress.com/

HAPTIC

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haptic_perception

TOUCH FOR BLIND

http://www.touchuserinterface.com/2009/09/painting-for-blind-magic-of-assistive.html


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MAKE YOUR OWN BOOK

http://www.blurb.com/

CSS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascading_Style_Sheets

GRAPH THEORY

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_theory

http://web.archive.org/web/20060206155001/http://www.nd.edu/~networks/gallery.htm

http://gfredericks.com/sandbox/graphs

SOFTWARE

http://www.babelgraph.org/links.html


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