Tree Shaded Screen

A Large Retroreflective Propeller Screen for Digital Public Art

 Overview

Tree-shaded screen is an interactive artwork for the public space. One can also think of it as a novel public augmented reality display system. The design aimed to make the entire display system as a short resting place for pedestrians walking by it, which is like a mother tree that shades and relaxes many living things in nature. The artwork consists of a toric couch, a screen-supporting pillar, and a propeller screen made of six light-weight blades. By resting on the couch, we can see the floating image projected on the propeller screen above. The display utilized persistence of vision to form a complete continuous image from the spinning propeller screen. To compensate for the environmental light in the public place, the propeller's blades were made of a retroreflective screen material which can directionally reflect the projected images to viewers under the screen. The work was demonstrated as a digital public art installation in Tokyo International Airport (Haneda Airport) , which is the biggest airport in Japan. We visualized the flight schedule at Haneda airport with avatars of animated bird pictures and projected them on the propeller screen. A virtual flight ticket registration system allowed users to interactively create their custom avatars based on their flight information and their profile pictures. To relieve the body of a user, the couch was made of a plastic-fiber based cushion material, TOYOBO BREATHAIR , which imitates an organic 3D structure of bird's nest made of mutually entangled fibers. This work was first experimentally exhibited for three days at The University of Tokyo Komaba Research Campus Open House, and then a four-month public exhibition was held in Haneda airport between October 2009 and January 2010. This research was conducted in collaboration with a media artist Yasuhiro Suzuki under the support of CREST Digital Public Art Project.

 Main Ideas

1 Vision of Spatially Augmented Resting Place in Public Space

2 System Overview

3 Design and User Experience

 System Demonstration

Floating Clock (1st prototype)

University of Tokyo Open House Demo (2nd prototype)

 Main Video

 Publications

Paper Kunihiro Nishimura, Yasuhiro Suzuki, Yutaka Tokuda, Tomohiro Iida, Takashi Kajinami, Tomohiro Tanikawa, Michitaka Hirose. 2009. Tree-shaded screen: A Propeller type screen for Public Art. In Proceeding of the Joint Virtual Reality Conference of EGVE - ICAT - EuroVR 2009 (JVRC09). pp.101--104. https://doi.org/10.2312/EGVE/JVRC09/101-104  
PDF [905.4KB]

Book Digital Public Art in Haneda Airport 空気の港 テクノロジー×空気で感じる新しい世界 (Japanese), 美術出版社, Mar.20 2010.
¥2,200