A development partner at POVO - PEOPLE exhibition at the Museu da Electricidade in Lisbon, NearInteraction was responsible for a range of interactive installations including a photo booth that captured and projected a series of still images to a mosaic on a wall at the front entrance, a gesturally activated table where users could browse historical identity documents using simple hand movements and a set of sensor embedded chairs allowing a selection of six audio themes related to people in Western music to be played and listened to. The exhibition offers a fresh sociological and political perspective on the origin and evolution of the concept of people using a variety of novel visual thinking and aesthetics and will be displayed from 19 June to 19 September 2010.

Watch the video of the exhibition.

As a taster of more to come, NearInteraction ran a fully booked-out weekend workshop in London this past weekend.

The Processing workshop, designed to serve as a solid introduction to the computer programming language for a mixed disciplinary group of inspired beginners, kicked off on Saturday with an animated discussion led by Diogo Terroso on Information Design versus Data visualization, followed on Sunday with a presentation on Narrative Techniques towards designing Emotive Data by The Earth is Not Flat’s Crystal Campbell and Nina Honiball.

We won’t say anything just yet, but we certainly have some more surprises up our sleeves!

Presenting augmented reality and gestural navigation in two interactive installations, and the encompassing exhibition design on commission for the Teatro Nacional D.Maria II in Lisbon, Portugal to commemorate the famous Portuguese playwright Gil Vicente.

Showcasing 16th Century manuscripts is no easy feat, but with NearInteraction’s Augmented Reality Vitrine with Gestural Navigation the audience could at once see both the original books yet were also able to gesturally browse pertinent images and excerpts chosen by the theatre’s historical experts.

The second installation, a Gestural Guided Archive Stand, is the cumulation of many years of collected footage, imagery and sound clips of several hundred performances. The audience can browse and pause the content intuitively with the mere movement of their hand whilst listening to various clips that are activated by an embedded proximity sensor activating sound.

The exhibition will be shown at the Teatro Nacional D.Maria II in Lisbon, Portugal throughout May 2010.

Diogo Terroso spoke at Gear this week, an event held outside Lisbon featuring a series of talks, demos, concerts and work-in-progress works. Speaking alongside YDreams, Edigma and Creative BitBox, NearInteraction discussed it’s unique approach to creating interactive installations.