Knee Deep – Interactive Installation from zanyparade on Vimeo.

Zanyparade/Emily Gobielle is a wonderfully talented Dutch artist, who together with Theo Watson created this very nice OpenCV piece for the 2009 Cinekid festival in Amsterdam.

What will happen when the virtual experience of something becomes more intense than the corresponding real experience?

Though we’ve never been in a real war, we think it’s safe to say war is better experienced virtually than factually. For instance–You can’t get killed. Also, the person you are playing have already gone through the hard military training and is an expert in shooting, running, hiding, flying helicopters etc.

Take the Niagara falls–what if you could jump off the view point cliff and fly through the falls, feel the flow of thousands of cubic metres of water around you. Would you want to go there for real after having that experience virtually?

A great example of a running implementation of this is possibly “Run Motherfucker Run” by the RMR_Organisation.

“Run Motherfucker Run is an interactive installation whereby anyone may try her luck in a city of empty streets, disserted intersections, ominous alleyways and unexpected obstacles. The distance you run on the conveyor belt is the same distance you will cover in the virtual city in front of you. By quickening your pace, the acceleration of the belt as well as the speed of the image increases and depending on your running behaviour and the directional choices you make, the progress of the film is determined.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBp-1Cnacvc

http://www.runmotherfuckerrun.nl/

Utilizing the wonderful code from mr. Shiffman.