What do you get when you combine massive video projectors and lots of time? A pinball machine you can play on the side of a building. Urban Screen, the German company that brought the ‘dreams’ of the Kunsthalle Museum to life have actually been responsible for a bunch of other really cool projects. For the Viertelfest Bremen (a sort of street festival), Urban Screen created Pinwall, the pinball game projected onto the face of a house. It’s augmented reality writ large, with the ball interacting with the countours of the building. Check out the video after the break.
In a similar feat, Urban Screen also turned a building into an augmented reality playscape. In “Jump”, the team recorded a group of gymnasts moving through small windows on a blue screen. These images were then superimposed onto a building, giving the illusion that humans were climbing and maneuvering through it. Definitely very cool. A video of “Jump” is below.
Of course, both of these projects are a couple of years old (from 2007), so I’m anxious to see what Urban Screen will cook up next. Make sure to check out their channel on Vimeo and hopefully they’ll keep creating some great augmented reality environments to match our urban ones.
Screen capture and video credit: Urban Screen
