Kids | Theater | Music

Participants paint with their bodies in this hands-on installation from Italy’s high-tech, interactive theater company Compagnia TPO. As visitors move around a curtain, their motions sparks colors that shift and grow like a living painting.

Swedish artist Max Björverud brings together music and gameplay in this installation featuring a projection-mapped carpet. Participants send rays of light across the floor by standing, jumping, and dancing on the pressure zones, shooting light to their opponent on the other side.

Illuminated spheres hover in the air with no support from strings or wires in this interactive kinetic sculpture installation from Japanese artist Ryo Kishi. Their dynamic fluctuations are guided by an invisible airstream that is based on the Coandă effect, which describes the propensity of a jet of gas or liquid to flow along a curved surface, rather than away from it. The spheres continually turn and vibrate like living organisms, responding in unexpected ways to visitors’ interactions with the air around them.

Three-dimensional holograms provide an interactive digital aquarium of fascinating creatures, designed by the Polish-born, San Francisco-based artist Marpi on a new type of light field display, called Looking Glass. Designed by Looking Glass Factory, these 3D holograms respond to outside manipulation and can be viewed from all angles, allowing for a shared experience between visitors.

Cubist Mirror, one work from New York artist Gene Kogan’s series Style Transfer Mirrors, reflects the world in the style of a Cubist painting, constantly changing to reflect what’s in front of it. The mirror is an LCD screen with a webcam to the side, running an openFrameworks program that applies the style transfer technique to the camera feed, continuously updating the image in real-time. Participants see themselves reflected and transformed into a work of art, which they can then manipulate with their actions.

This interactive installation from Masary Studios in Boston illuminates the human body through light and sound. Using custom-built software and a stereoscopic live camera, participants are invited to interact with the piece as their movements are presented in real-time on a large display. The camera finds human silhouettes and displays them in various colors, filters, and animations on the screen, encouraging social interaction and play to create complex, dynamic visuals.

Ghost Sine is an interactive laser display that explores the relationship of shapes, motion, and symmetries, designed by New Mexico-based mixed media artist Christopher Short. Using ultraviolet projection on a slow phosphor screen, motion acquires ghostly trails. Patterns of light and dark emerge that constantly refresh and fade in a spirograph of symmetry and photon decay, crystal structures, sacred geometries, and organic shapes.

London-based new media artist Matteo Zamagni creates an immersive sensory VR experience that explores the arcane forms of fractals. Participants explore an ever-changing 3D geometric environment in real time, accompanied by a musical score by Daniel Ben Hur designed to facilitate meditative state and relaxation. Users interact with the environment through remote controls, gaining insight into the seemingly familiar mathematical structures of biological and non-biological forms.

Adapted from the works of French surrealist painter Yves Tanguy, Reincarnation is a virtual reality art experience. Media artist, interaction designer, and developer Jing Yan invites the audience into a surreal symbiosis of abstract creatures. Participants can fly and navigate in the world, encounter primitive life forms at different scales, and embody and interact with the creatures, challenging the anthropocentric worldview in an artificial intelligence era.

Empty space becomes a music-making chamber in this installation by Swedish artists Max Björverud and Håkan Lidbo. Participants sing or play a single note into the space. A microphone picks up the sound, detects the pitch with PureData, and plays back a sampled female voice singing the same pitch, creating a tunnel that sings along with visitors.

Interactive performance art transforms everyday objects into rock instruments. Participants can play a broom guitar, dustpan keyboard and duster drum, designed by Japanese artists Tetsuto Takahashi and Maiko Moshimura. When the objects are activated through motion—similar to playing air guitar—the position and pressure connect with a sensor and convert to MIDI data, which causes video and lighting to run. Anyone can pick up and play easily, and more advanced musicians can create songs.

What if making music needed no written notes? Beat Blox, by Swedist artist Per Holmquist, gets close. Three turntables make no music on their own, but when participants place blocks on top, they trigger a sound each time they rotate. As users arrange and manipulate the blocks, they create complex compositions with turntables, sensors, and MIDI sounds controlled by Arduino micro controllers.

Drawings come to life in this augmented reality app by Aidan Wolf. Participants create their own doodle, which is animated and layered before being digitally incorporated into live video of the surrounding area. Looking through the app, users can discover the drawings of those who came before, as well as leaving their own mark.

Virtual hand puppets come to life through augmented reality in this experience designed by 2020CV. YoPuppet uses technology to capture 22 points on participants’ hands in real-time and map them to a digital puppet’s face, allowing users to manipulate the puppet as it appears on screen. Participants can choose between a variety of characters, from animals to aliens, and use voice-changing effects to manipulate the sound of the puppet’s voice.

SMing is an interactive choir installation offering visitors the chance to be both conductor and an entire choir simultaneously. Participants make a brief recording of their own voice, which is then multiplied and processed to create a full choir. Using a sensitive conducting baton, users can change pitch and tempo to create their own choral masterpiece. SMing is designed by Superbe and Dogstudio, international sister companies based in Chicago, Brussels, and Mexico City that take pride in crafting immersive digital products and emotion-filled interactive installations.

Aerodrums is a revolutionary percussion instrument based on optical motion tracking technology and is played by air drumming. There are no electronics on the player, only very light retro-reflective markers on the feet and on the drum sticks. The drum sticks feel exactly like traditional wooden drum sticks and allow for natural playing with the same skills used to play a traditional drum set.

Virtual Growth is a real-time interactive projection mapping installation by Netherlands-based artist Lieven van Velthoven, a designer of interactive software, games, and digital art. Light grows to trace the environment, illuminating hidden edges and organically interacting with people and objects. Users become a living artwork as the installation responds to their bodies and they become part of the larger painting.

This year’s lineup: Spirit Robot, a documentary about the Chale Wote Street Art Festival in Accra, Ghana; The Free Fall Dancer, about a classical dancer who became the skydiving world champion; The Overview Effect, the story of an astronaut about to go to space, told from a legendary observatory; Out of the Blue, about a child in Mexico who inherits an unexpected future; Armonia, which reimagines a piano concerto as a fantastic planet where music comes alive; and Remembering Our Ancestors: Ch'aak' S'aagi (EAGLE BONE), an unapologetically indigenous journey of remembrance and reflection.

Bogo is a highly reactive, pet-like alien creature you can play fetch with, feed, and help thrive—all in virtual reality. This creature simulation is an emotionally engaging, broadly appealing game-like experience that draws from a history of pet games, but is uniquely VR-first. Created to explore the affordances of tetherless, self-contained VR, Bogo is made by Oculus, which redefined the digital gaming industry with its reality- and distance-defying VR headsets.

Enter a portal to play a game of hide and seek or swim through an endless ocean. The point is to have fun, relax, hang out with your friends, and maybe make some new ones along the way. Created by research-driven VR & AR company Normal, Half + Half is a multi-player VR game that’s all about fun, connection, and exploring how we can spend time together more meaningfully in the future in spite of the limitations of physical distance.