Created by Hi-ReS! and Nanika is a project for the new Hyundai i40, which was revealed at the Geneva Motorshow on the 1 March. Starting on Friday, 25 Feb, users could connect through Facebook (or not) to directly participate in the live light reveal. The web application built in Flash by Theo Tillberg, Mike Tucker and others allows users to animate light over the car and change views. This is of course sent directly to the warehouse where the car is located and video feedback shown back to the users on the site.
In a nutshell, the software written in openFrameworks by Andreas Müller was about finding a way to project a piece of video onto an arbitrary shape of lights. For the earlier project for John Lewis, Andreas hardcoded in 4 rectangles around the model of the house, something similar that was done for Ars Electronica by YesYesNo, but in the new system Andreas represents the surface in 3D space, use that as a view and then get the lights positions within the 2D surface by looking them up in an ortographic projection. Once you have the 2D positions of the lights within the surface, the brightness is calculated based on their 3D position. For fun, Andreas also hooked up OSC control using TouchOSC iPad app allowing him to create swarm like light effect with the setup in real time (see video below).
The official site for the launch was http://www.hyundai-i40.eu
also see hi-res.net and nanikawa.com
