with Thomas Hoch

The project is motivated by the idea of translating body movements into a digital environment. In search of a playful, alternative solution to provoke questions of physical ergonomics. Direct visual inspiration was the game developed by Marc Schiller – Real Desktop. It is a game tool that turns your desktop into a three-dimensional space filled with 3D objects, allowing you to move the items around and make them collide and interact with one another. The goal is to re-create the basic computer operation actions in a form of a game but in real space.

The game created is a 3D realistic recreation of Windows XP desktop. Using a projection of the emblematic landscape wallpaper and real objects for representation of the icons. The player has the possibility to move freely in the area of the desktop, and in this way transforms figuratively into the mouse cursor itself. Once the target is established, the plastic arrow is shot off into the sky, and the click happens when it reaches the highest point of its own flight. The tool in the face of this arrow is built in a way that in the case of a well-balanced technique it falls in a straight line down. So for example, if the participant wants to “click” on the trash bin, he or she has to find the best position and technique of shooting, so the arrow falls straight into the trash bin. All of these movements are displayed on the desktop of a real computer. To make it work we used a simple web camera and computer vision algorithm. With the LED on the arrow, we were able to track the movement and direct the cursor movement on the laptop desktop.