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Tamper: Gestural Interface for Cinematic Design
John Underkoffler was born in Pennsylvania on June 30, 1967. He received his B.S. in media arts and sciences in 1988, followed by an M.S. in 1991 and a PhD in 1999 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). While completing his doctoral work at MIT Underkoffler invented the I/O bulb, which lead to the development of the Luminous Room. Underkoffler saw the I/O bulb as a multi-purpose invention that would allow any architectural space to be used as a surface to display visual information. The bulb would record live video of the projection surfaces and more importantly could be implemented in urban planning, where the study of light in and on buildings would assist in the organization of structures. Underkoffler is best known for his invention of the gestural interface system called G-Speak also developed during his doctoral studies. This is an interactive system were data is lifted off from the computer screen and transferred into real space. The user is able to navigate through data using gestures and arm movements instead of a mouse or keyboard. A user could move information up, down, and side to side with a quick gesture, and even point and zoom in on a specific object. A similar interface system was developed for the film Minority Report, starring Tom Cruise, on which Underkoffler served as a technical advisor, and the system was used by Cruise in the film.
Artist Statement
Here's cinema, one-way medium extraordinaire. It takes hundreds of people to make a movie, and since they usually know what they're doing your best bet is still the same after a century: sit, take it in. Film is a perfect form. Despite occasional false obituaries, cinema's doing just fine -- visual narrative, in this purest dynamic guise, is strong stitching and nowhere close to coming apart. Then again, here you are, picking at the seams. TAMPER wants you to. TAMPER is a filmic deconstruction kit, recombinant cinema, Mr. Potatohead with movies instead of tubers, a 24-frames-per-second director set, a jolly butcher's diagram that shows where to use the knife and how to take the sight of bleeding celluloid. Eisenstein's gloves are off but you're wearing TAMPER's, because now it's gestural cinema: a way to poke and prod and grasp and grope film, to shimmy and jostle film's parts into new configurations, to upset careful filmic structures that had nothing like it in mind. TAMPER is a fleeting tactile space for talking back to the screen.
Click on image to download pdf copy of the museum handout
Image credit: TAMPER, G-speak installation, courtesy of John Underkoffler; Photo credit Parker Loris Underkoffler.
