digital sand animation canvas

‘sand canvas’ interface for creating digital sand animations

‘sand canvas‘, created by a team at the human-computer interaction laboratory at the national university of singapore, provides a digital means to recreate sand animation. the traditional art is a branch of performance theatre in which an artist tells stories by drawing images in sand and continually altering them, thereby creating a streamed animation.

‘sand canvas’ advances beyond traditional sand animation by incorporating additional digital capabilities into the program. in addition to being able to save and replay pieces, the software permits the combination of sand animation with video, and the replication of free-form hand gestures, recording them and enabling them to be ‘stamped’ elsewhere and at other times in the animation. much more portable than a physical sand animation table, ‘sand canvas’ also differs from similar design programs in the closeness with which it realizes gestural input, mimicking the appearance of drawing in sand and modeling specific behaviours of the material, such as the effect of pouring sand into a cup.

currently a prototype project, ‘sand canvas’ is written in C++, utilizing openframeworks for its interactive components. it was presented at CHI 2011, the international conference on human-computer interaction.

video demo of the project

example screenshot from a sand animation

the program permits the use of different images and videos as a background

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infiniti digital art competition currently, designboom in collaboration with INFINITI is offering an international competition asking participants to design spectacular or interactive digital artworks, to be installed and displayed throughout europe. participation is open to applicants from every country in the world: to professionals, students, vjs, and design-enthusiasts.

registration is free and now open, through july 8th, 2011. for more information about the competition and how to register, click here.