The Intention of Our Invention

At the California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly), San Luis Obispo, an interdisciplinary team of professors and their students from the departments of English, Art and Design, Architecture, Computer Science, and Graphic Arts and Communication have designed an interactive new media theater called the CompuObscura, a device that updates the concept of the camera obscura and connects it to other CompuObscuras around the globe through Internet II technology (Internet II is a faster version—twice the throughput—of the current Internet that is currently restricted for use by select research centers and major universities in the USA).To inform the development and design of the CompuObscura, the Cal Poly faculty and students have collected this technology invention, development and testing process into a research collective called the Lumiere Ghosting Project.

While the CompuObscura is a fairly complex technical device, and the Lumiere Ghosting Project is a complicated combination of research, pedagogy, usability testing, and program management, the ultimate goal for all these projects is fairly simple, and somewhat light-hearted—they both revolve around play and experimentation with emerging digital technologies.

The overall goal of the CompuObscura device is to encourage play between a viewer and a set of images. Like all truly good play the goal is to simply allow viewers to have fun, to explore, and to interact with images as freely and as seamlessly as possible. Good, open, free and expressive play often creates our deepest and most meaningful impressions and our most memorable narratives (Missac & Nicholsen). As instructors, students and researchers we are attempting to create an artistic play and exploration space for adults and children that allows them to create their own impressions and narratives through the facilitated process of interacting with a variety of projected moving images.

Through free-form, interactive play, the Lumiere Ghosting Project is designed to help people take a fresh look at how the projection and wide-spread distribution of moving images have complicated, and increased the speed of cultural change and cultural interaction (Nielsen). The Lumiere Ghosting Project is also designed to serve as a curriculum framework inside of which students and faculty can explore the theoretical and historical ramifications of this wide-spread social change and interaction. To help accomplish these goals, the Lumiere Ghosting Project makes use of the CompuObscura both as a device for creation, for technological development, and for study. Students and faculty connected with the Lumiere Ghosting Project help design, develop and refine different aspects of the CompuObscura, but at the same time they are all encouraged to explore (and add to) the histories that support the object’s design, and to study and learn from the way viewers interact with the device.