Kinect hackers blaze trails into mass market projection mapping

Since the Xbox 360 Kinect controller was hacked to work with an open source PC driver last November, creative minds have been running wild. Indie interface developers and their unique uses of Kinect have helped turn it into one of Microsoft's most exciting products.

A video circulating on the Web today shows what is possible when pairing the Xbox 360 Kinect sensor with a projector. In this hack, Elliot Woods of Kimchi and Chips demonstrates some rudimentary projection mapping.

Kinect Hadouken from Elliot Woods on Vimeo.

Projection Mapping has been used mostly by installation artists and advertisers in the recent past, and at a relatively high material cost and an even higher labor cost.

Integrated Visions Projection Mapping (Stationary View), 08-09-10 from Integrated Visions Productions on Vimeo.

The installation shown above, for example, was relatively small in scale when compared to some of the massive budget advertising projects done in 2010. It took only six days for a team of about eight people to create, but it still required a $90,000 projector with its own generator to pull it off. And to top it off, it's not an interactive piece.

While Kimchi and Chips are themselves an art and design firm, their solution differs in that it can be depoloyed entirely with consumer hardware, effectively breaking projection mapping out of the "installation" mold and showing it can also be widely deployable.