Live Park 4D

When Minority Report was released nearly a decade ago, it gave a glimpse into a future of participatory media environments and responsive technological infrastructures. We haven’t quite caught up to the yesterday’s future, but you can now simulate much of Tom Cruise’s cybernetic gymnastics at the Live Park 4D Art Factory in Gyeonggi-do, South Korea. As Gizmag reports, the giant indoor theme-park, which opened at the end of January for the season, is packed with 65 attractions, including large interactive tableaux and art installations, spread out over a 10,000 square-foot space.

Kinect sensors placed throughout the park register movements, faces, and voices via RFID wristbands worn by visitors, who each create avatars of themselves to interact with computer-animated characters on screen. A combination of 3D video, holograms, and augmented reality features move the virtual adventures along through seven different entertainment zones, where players may encounter a host of foreign avatars and extraterrestrial landscapes–all screened on the world’s largest 360 degree stereoscopic theater. A single narrative may have multiple endings so visitors will have much to explore among all the hologram performances, movies, projections, and 4D games the park has to offer. At night the whole park is transformed into a club, with DJs, events and performances completing the spectacle. Given Live Park’s success, its run has been extended until later in the year, while more permanent parks are being discussed for China and Singapore.

by Samuel Medina

posted in Uncategorized

tagged 4D, augmented reality, homo ludens, South Korea, technology, Theme Park, video, Virtual Reality

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