Plug-in-Play represents a playground of ideas related to how we engage our urban environments. By connecting a number of objects (some existing and some staged) in San Jose City Hall Plaza to the building facade via oversized theatrical plugs, we suggest a new type of environment wherein social interactions, citizenship, and personal activities are more dynamically reflected. As visitors interact with objects on the plaza or connect to the installation via social networks, this physical and virtual activity is registered through the projection of an abstracted urban landscape on the facade of City Hall. The resulting effect constitutes an attempt to create a more accurate representation of the vitality and complexity of our urban environments. Visit www.plug-in-play.com for more information.

Credits
Principal: David Rockwell
Design Team: Joshua Walton, James Tichenor, Keetra Dixon, Brett Renfer,
Adi Marom, Tucker Viemeister, Zack Boka, Lars Berg, Ellen Haller, Chris Allick
Projection Equipment: SenovvA, Inc.
Commissioned by Zero1 and The City of San Jose

The platforms placed throughout the San Jose City Hall plaza function as both stations for interaction and representations of various civic activities. Visitors can jump on a hopscotch court, shout into a megaphone, or use digital services such as Twitter or Flickr to create content. Each of these interactions prompts a different virtual reaction on the projected façade that accumulates at the upper building levels in a rolling cityscape. This final cumulative step serves as a dynamic representation of the activity at City Hall.

The LAB wrote custom software in openFrameworks, C++, and GLSL for the projected content, and used Processing to develop software for interfacing with the sensor network. The sensors were created using funnel.cc’s Arduino Fio, XBee wireless transmiters, and an Arduino shield that the LAB developed based on Adafruit’s Wave Shield.