Technologies: Kinect, OpenNI in Processing

For my Interactive Art and Communication Design course I was tasked to created an interactive piece. I ended up working with the Kinect, using OpenNI in Processing. I wanted to utilize this data to track hand positions and wanted to map the creation of a “star” with a certain hand motion. To create a star the behavior is a flicking motion, with the hand needing to be a certain distance from the shoulder, and having moved past a certain threshold from the previous to the current frame. When this happens a twinkling star appears and floats towards the sky. Each star also has a life span so that eventually it fades into the sky and can be replaced by new stars.