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The digital Expression Wall at the Power Smart Village will allow visitors to "paint" messages to athletes, or to express their thoughts on conservation.

January 26, 2010

Express yourself with digital spray paint during the Games

Blaine Kyllo
For bchydro.com

Want to send a message to Canadian athletes during the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games? Use the Expression Wall at BC Hydro's Power Smart Village to cheer them on with messages of inspiration.

You can also use the Wall to share — with the world — what sustainability means to you.

The Expression Wall allows visitors to digitally "spray paint" on a 11-foot-by-7-foot screen. Anything written or "painted" on the Wall will be archived online through the use of time-lapse photography. 

Power Smart Village organizers will also bring in street artists such as Scott Sueme and Jordan Quinn to spend some time painting on the Expression Wall, and other artists will be on hand to facilitate interaction and to encourage people to express themselves.

Get Google Map directions to the Power Smart Village

Painting with light

The technology for the Expression Wall was developed by Vancouver's Tangible Interaction. CEO and creative director Alex Beim says it was first conceived for a street festival in Richmond. Tangible wanted to turn the windows of a city building into a canvas that everyone could paint on. But rather than use fingertips or brushes, people would paint using LED flashlights emitting beams of infrared.

The technology starts with a big projection screen. Behind it are a projector and a camera. While the human eye is unable to detect infrared, the camera is able to track the light beams being given off by the flashlights. The camera relays that information to a computer system, which interprets the signals and determines what the artist is trying to do. The result is then projected back onto the screen.

The infrared can be turned on and off so the artist has total control over the "brush stroke",  and the colour of the "paint" can be easily changed. The Expression Wall provides all of the potential and none of the mess.

In the past couple of years the flashlight was replaced with a marker, which has since transformed into what looks, feels and sounds like a spray paint can — right down to the rattle of the bearings when the can is shaken. They are simply controllers, no different than a computer keyboard or mouse.

"The beauty of the paint can," says Beim, "is that unlike a mouse, we can have lots of people interacting at the same time."

Working together

Beim says that when one person is interacting with the Wall alone, they are usually doodling. Professional artists might paint beautiful murals. But in those situations, he says, other people become spectators, in awe of the artist's talent coming to life.

"When you have a bunch of people working, it becomes a community experience," he says. One person starts a drawing that another finishes. People start painting together without having a plan for what they're creating, content to see what comes of the cooperation. It's not about the outcome, but the experience.