Ideas for a new virtual Sony Store

Virtual realms are becoming more and more real as they are integrated with our physical environment. Today, you can purchase a product online and have it show up at your door the next day. If we can begin to control both the virtual and the physical environments through each realm, each becomes more real to one another therefore blurring the real and virtual. My proposal is that in-store interactions will directly affect how products are viewed and interacted with online. The opposite will also be true. This will create a dialog between at-home shoppers and in-store shoppers where both will be aware of each others presence. The interaction and movement will be very similar to that of the Sony Rolly. Orbiting online will cause in store product to do the same. Orbiting a product in the store will cause movement online. The translation between the two will allow users to be aware of what products people are looking at online and whats being seen in-store.




This "swarm" of products has the ability to organize itself "on the fly" per user demands. Unlike traditional organization that involves hierarchies, the swarm has the ability to change its organizational structure by user preference. Organization can fluctuate between categories such as: price, latest product, most popular, product type, etc. This empowers users to quickly and efficiently navigate to the product they are looking for. Information on a currently active product is displayed along with a rotational control to see the product from all angles.




A virtual environment should be free of all gravity and notions of enclosure. There is simply no need for these things given that there are no natural elements that a user needs to be protected against. Therefore, a building doesn't need to have these performative aspects. instead, a virtual building should respond to a users needs of orientation, memory creation, and organization of information. My proposal for the Sony store is nothing more that a swarm of products that the user can interact with.




Trendy Swarm study.

From wikipedia:

Flocking is a common demonstration of emergence and emergent behavior, first simulated in 1986 by Craig Reynolds with his simulation program, Boids. It is a simulation of simple agents which are allowed to move, with basic rules governing their movement. The result is alike to a flock of birds, a school of fish, or a swarm of insects.

Basic flocking is controlled by three simple rules:

1. Separation - avoid crowding neighbors
2. Alignment - steer towards average heading of neighbors
3. Cohesion - steer towards average position of neighbors

With these three simple rules, the flock moves in an extremely realistic way, creating complex motion and interaction that would be extremely hard to create otherwise.

For further information please visit this thesis project by Calpoly alumni: German Aparicio

Another Second life?

Sony Rolly

I was conducting some sony product research and came across this, it's the rolly and I found the way it transforms music data into movement quite interesting and relevant in designing a sony store.

Guggenheim Virtual Museum Text

The Guggenheim virtual museum is a collaboration between Asymptote Architects and the Guggenheim museum organization to create a cyberspace museum. If it ever gets launched, it will be a continuously evolving project as new exhibits are brought in and old ones disappear. The project involves 3D, navigable spaces and interactive, physical spaces that can be accessed throughout the Guggenheim locations. The goal is to converge the way art is viewed through the museum locations and the cyberspace environment. Paintings and videos will be converted for display online but the most important aspect of this project is that it will exhibit projects that can only be displayed through the computer. The goal is to also inspire artist to create new forms of art; much like Frank Lloyd Wrights Guggenheim inspired a new age of artist.
The online museum is a space that is in constant flux. It morphs in accordance with the users movement from node to node. It has many metaphors that link the museum to actual space. The beginning animation looks like a representation of an atrium. The transformations are similar to what the eye would perceive if moving through a building. This creates an experience based on time and memory which is more like a real life experience. Events and exhibits are found in various areas; they are not listed or linked to. Although the ‘atrium” space does have and up and down orientation the rest of the model doesn’t. It maintains the precursors of an actual building but it removes any notion of gravity once the user actually “moves” through the museum. It provides some of the amenities found in an actual museum: special exhibits, archives, events, amenities, Cyber Theater, and shopping. The interface allows for simultaneous tasks. For example, work in an exhibit can be viewed while simultaneously participating in a lecture or watching a film.
The museum works through 3 main on screen objects. One is the morphing 3-dimensional representation of the Guggenheim. This model is designed like twisting corridors with nodes placed in various locations. As the space is navigated, this 3-d building morphs, rotates, and is reoriented on the screen. To ease the disorientation created by the buildings constant flux, a vertical bar is set in place to aid in navigating to the main areas of the building. Those main areas include the Artscape, Azone, Mediasphere, Virtual Architecture, and the GVM Archive. As it moves across the screen, like a scanner, it transforms the space it passes over to create the identity of the new space that gets “occupied.” The third element is a bar across the bottom of the screen that allows visitors to see the various states of the building at any given moment. This bottom bar is actually a table showing the angle of rotation in the x and z axis for orientation. It can be placed on the screen or hidden depending on user preference.
Asymptote designed the museum using Alias, Maya, Cosmo Worlds VRML, Photoshop, Premiere, and Flash.

Guggenheim Virtual Museum Images

Guggenheim Virtual Museum

Heres a video I Pulled of Asymptotes website on the GVM. I'm currently doing a case study on virtual environments and I thought this project had some provocative ideas.

Finally the Long Awaited Video

Here is the video animation of my pattern. It involves placing bones in nodular tiles of the pattern to achieve the "rug" effect. The idea is to transform the space through the way these "rugs" fall and create partitions.

Heres some test images from V-Ray meanwhile I wait for my
computer to render my animation, aprox. 5 hours left for the
animation to finish.

Tron

Heres a clip from Tron my professor brought up because of the
similarities with my process.

Pin Board Study

This is a study I did into scripted movement. Its the centipede game
with a few modifications to go with some programming I did, I
should have a preliminary video rendering of my 3d pattern within
the next few hours. I will edit this post soon with the rules I created. Stay Tuned...

Beta 1.01 Poster

This pattern was developed by using every software known to man...
Well not literally but it did involve Photo shop, Illustrator, auto cad,
Rhino, and 3ds max to name a few. Why did I do this? I really don't
know, but it was fun nonetheless.

Work Flow proGene

Here is a small work flow diagram I did to describe my process. I'm
hoping its self explanatory, but usually everything gets interpreted
differently then usually intended.