Connected: Birth-Death-Rebirth Through Tangible/Intangible/Virtual Explorations of Hands

This paper presents Connected: Birth-Death-Rebirth, an art installation that explores imaginative lives from human hands in the extended physical environment with physical, virtual, and networked environments. The project is an extract of our body and generates virtual lives (birds, trees, and snakes). The new creatures build new societies based on computer algorithms and mimic human society and behaviors. The audience creates new organisms by putting their hands or objects into the white box in front of the projection screen. Their input becomes a flock of birds, a group of trees, or snakes in the projected virtual environment. Participants can get immersed in the virtual environment through a projection or a VR headset. In the virtual environment with a VR headset, they can navigate the world of Connected: Birth-Death-Rebirth by walking or teleporting using the VIVE controllers. The new world is the dynamism of the trees, birds, and snakes. They are born, grow, interact, dead, and are reborn in the environment.