Pixiq

In the future, how might digital images work for us and how might they alter our surroundings?

For years, I have been intrigued by the idea of digital imaging walls that would change its imagery according  to mood, time of day or season. That imagery might be a still or a HD video, or a 3D video. I am talking about whole walls that are screens and not about a large monitor or a wall of monitors.  I am talking about walls made as imaging devices.

I have thought for a while now, that the future will very likely be complete virtual environments that are created with images that surround us in our homes, our office and our car.

Imagine sitting in an office made of interactive touch screen walls and interactive surfaces that can look like any space you want. Everything in the room is virtual including the clock, the desk, the keyboard, the books and the photographs of your family and the dog. All of these things change or can change as the day progresses. Your office could be a beach or the woods where the occasional animal strolls through or flies by. Your meetings are with people on the other side of the world but projected as if  they are sitting across from you. At 5:00 the whole room changes into a customized office for the evening shift.  Similar concepts might happen in the kitchen or in other rooms of your home. Many of these things are already in the works and will someday soon be commonplace. The virtual office has been a concept that is getting closer to becoming more of a reality every day.

I believe that galleries of the future will be electronic walls that can change what you are looking at with a gesture of the hand or where you are in a room. Galleries in your home will take you electronically into the Louvre, the George Eastman House or MOMA. You might be looking at the images for the current showing while your friend is reviewing the images from the previous show. You will use images to see anything you want anywhere. The electronic image allows us to have a Diane Arbus or a Jerry Uelsmann or a Monet or all of them at the same time. We can keep them up as long as we want and when we are interested in something else we will simply gesture or touch the screen to change it. 

There are a number of fine art photographers and videographers who have been working with this idea for a few years now. I have seen a few photographic installations where the image changes slowly over time or a seemingly still subject where something might move or fly through the view.

It seems that we already have all of the components to make this a reality. We have flat screens, projection, audio and computers as well as high definition video, 3DTV and cameras, touch and gesture and other technologies that would likely allow such scenarios.

To me, it seems that all we need to do is take the technologies we now have and scale things up to fit our spaces.

THIS POST IS PARTIALLY IN REPLY TO DAVE BECKERMAN'S POST ABOUT STILL IMAGES THAT MOVE.