Code on Canvas founders Lukasz Karluk and René Christen along with good mate and collaborator Nick Clark created the Mobile Projection Unit (MPU) as a platform for making interactive gaming experiences in urban landscapes.
Snake the Planet!
Snake the Planet! takes the classic Snake game and adopts it to the urban canvas. Each level is generated based on the architecture of the building it is projected onto. Windows, doors and signs become the boundaries and obstacles in the game as animated objects collide with and bounce off them using real-time physics. The multiplayer game also has a Tron-like competitive element, where one player can intentionally block the others’ path to win the game.
For a truly mobile (and zippy) urban gaming experience, we built an electric tricycle, which allowed us to move around quickly from wall to wall and setup new game levels at any location. Powered by 3 deep cycle marine batteries, the trike has enough juice to power Snake the Planet! and other games for over 4 hours.
Modern Polaxis
Polaxis has been a long running project with interactive comic book artist Sutu. It has been through a number of different manifestations but the central motif has always remained the same, the idea that a static image can be animated to life and reveal a hidden layer of a secret narrative.
TagScan
Bit of fun scanning graffiti tags with pico projectors. It’s our response to projection mapping trying to always go bigger, so we’ve gone the other way, focusing on the smaller detail in our urban landscapes.
There’s loads of tags and stickers around our studio and we wanted to interact with these forms and use their designs to drive our live audio-reactive visuals. We’ve built a super-portable rig, basically a pico projector and mobile device which does the scanning and projection mapping, as well as running the visuals.
Outlines
Its a nice feeling when you create a piece of street art and see it the next day on your way to work. But if you are a projection artist and working only under cover of night, these moments are only fleeting and disappear with a flick of the projector.
Outlines is an attempt at immortalising urban digital artworks through the medium of tape-art, which saves the skeletal remains of the low-poly, audio-reactive projections. Each triangle is outlined with tape in a manual reconstruction of the 3d visuals, using human hands to print the image onto the wall.
