52 Card Psycho is an installation-based investigation into cinematic structures and interactive cinema viewership. The concept is simple: 52 cards, each printed with a unique identifier, are replaced in the subject’s view by the individual shots that make up a movie scene. The cards can be stacked, dealt, arranged in their original order or re-composed in different configurations, creating spreads of time. The technology used is marker-based augmented reality, where special printed markers are recognized in the video feed and pass data regarding their unique identifier, their position, and their orientation. The computer then feeds a display overlaying the video clips of each shot onto the appropriate card and continually mapping their position and orientation. 52 Card Cinema has been presented at ISEA in Singapore 2008, at Imagine RIT 2009, Rochester, NY, and as a Juried Exhibition, ISEA in Belfast 2009.

Project Page: http://52cardpsycho.com/

–By Geoffrey Alan Rhodes