Sniff by by Karolina Sobecka with software design by Jim George (USA)

As you walk down the street you are approached by a dog. He is on his guard trying to discern your intentions. He will follow you and interpret your gestures as friendly or aggressive. He will try to engage you in a relationship and get you to pay attention to him.
Sniff is an interactive projection in a storefront window. As the viewer walks by the projection, her movements and gestures are tracked by a computer vision system. A CG dog dynamically responds to these gestures and changes his behavior based on the state of engagement with the viewer.

Sniff, simulating the visceral satisfaction of reality’s responsiveness and dynamism, is also an exploration of engagement of two different planes of understanding, and of relationships created by body’s presence in an environment. The experience is very familiar yet strange, leading us to re-examine notions we take for granted. Dog’s behavior externalizes the process of assessment, evaluation and testing we perform every time anything new enters in the scope of our experience. Sniff has us unwittingly enter into an exchange simply by following the basic instinct of stopping and looking at something that is paying attention to us. A tension is produced by a mixture of fears and expectations, curiosity and interest.

Interview

What has lead you to “create a work”?

I’m interested in engaging a viewer in a dynamic exchange. I find interactivity a very powerful tool, though it is difficult to work with. The dynamism and responsiveness of ‘real’ world is so rich and expectations of it so deeply ingrained, it’s difficult for digital artworks to compete with them. In this project I was interested in exploring a very basic and intuitive, though complex process of engagement and process of intuiting someone’s else’s desires and intentions from their behavior.

What tools do you use the most at present?

For this project I used an open source 3d animation software Blender3d (for modeling and animation), openFrameworks — a C++ library (for video tracking) and Unity3d game engine. Most of my projects rely on some kind of interaction with the image so the above mentioned software as well as other ‘physical computing’ tools (such as different kind of sensing, actuating and display technologies).

Could you explain how you work, what themes or concepts and what is important to you?

I’m a story-teller and an image-maker dedicated to creating interactive work that engages ‘the real’: that exists in people’s daily reality. My work relies on narrative metaphors which unfold from the viewer’s actions and on evocative imagery that engages the imagination of the viewer. I aim to inspire people to re-examine their relationships to their physical, social, and ecological environment. I aim to inspire wonder and play that might lead to discoveries and to new realizations. I aim to achieve poetic experiences, part of whose poetry lies in the unexpectedness of juxtapositions facilitated by the use of technology.
I often use projection as a display medium. Its nocturnal and impermanent nature can be a powerful counterpoint for urban monumental structures, and a vehicle for combining subjective or imaginary narratives with physical space. It enables the creation of a blend of virtual and real, subjective and objective, permanent and ephemeral that calls to mind the term ‘magical reality’.

What is influencing you?

i’m always influenced by art and design, great and small stories, advances in science and technology, and their repercussions in popular culture.