David Lu / Fingerprint Maze

Visual Design, Interaction Design, and Tangible Media

With Amy Franceschini and Michael Swaine

Description
An installation that lets one wander through a 3D labyrinth made from one's own scanned fingerprint.

At left is a beautiful, hand crafted fingerprint scanner that uses a prism, a macro photographic lens, and a webcam to capture live video of one's print. It is Michael Swaine's very handy, handiwork.

A Processing application (with some custom Java bits), running in presentation mode, captures live video from the scanner. Each frame of video is convolved and visualised as a grid of pixels.

Viewers of the installation can re-scan their fingerprints, if they like.

The scanned fingerprint is saved to another computer running the Fingerprint Maze game.

An OS X application, written in C++ and OpenGL, picks up fingerprint files and renders them in 3D. For each dark pixel it finds in the image, it places a translucent cube in virtual space.

The labyrinth can be navigated from above, or explored at ground level, as seen here.

What we made is something between copy machine art and generative architecture. At left is what resulted when Amy kissed the surface of the scanner.

Motivation
I saw this project as an opportunity to encourage reflection about fingerprinting and identity, which are very interesting issues in the current political climate, in a very neutral, understated way—a non traditional, non-violent video game.

Appearances
This project was exhibited at Playshop, at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (SF) in March 2004, and at Pond (SF) in November and December 2004. In Jan 2005, Fingerprint Maze will appear on the Bay Area public television arts show, Spark.

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		Fingerprint Maze With Amy Franceschini and Michael Swaine Description An installation that lets one wander through a 3D labyrinth made from one's own scanned fingerprint. At left is a beautiful, hand crafted fingerprint scanner that uses a prism, a macro photographic lens, and a webcam to capture live video of one's print. It is Michael Swaine's very handy, handiwork.
		A Processing application (with some custom Java bits), running in presentation mode, captures live video from the scanner. Each frame of video is convolved and visualised as a grid of pixels.
		Viewers of the installation can re-scan their fingerprints, if they like.
		The scanned fingerprint is saved to another computer running the Fingerprint Maze game.
		An OS X application, written in C++ and OpenGL, picks up fingerprint files and renders them in 3D. For each dark pixel it finds in the image, it places a translucent cube in virtual space.
		The labyrinth can be navigated from above, or explored at ground level, as seen here.
		What we made is something between copy machine art and generative architecture. At left is what resulted when Amy kissed the surface of the scanner. Motivation I saw this project as an opportunity to encourage reflection about fingerprinting and identity, which are very interesting issues in the current political climate, in a very neutral, understated way—a non traditional, non-violent video game. Appearances This project was exhibited at Playshop, at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (SF) in March 2004, and at Pond (SF) in November and December 2004. In Jan 2005, Fingerprint Maze will appear on the Bay Area public television arts show, Spark.