Bad Ninja is an interactive life sized video installation with a Ninja trying to steal something. When a visitor gets too close and looks at the Ninja, the Ninja freezes. The installation is done with Processing using OpenCV and a kinect. I did this project as a part of my bachelor thesis at University of Applied Sciences of Hof.
Bad Ninja is done with Processing, using the kinect with openNI from PrimeSense and openCV for face recognition. The kinect detects if a person is in the room and tries to find out, whereto the person is looking. When the person looks at the ninjas in the video, the kinect recognices a face and pauses the video.
For recording the ninjas in action, I got help from Matt Belbin and Yu Watanabe. Two film students currently based in berlin. We recorded a 4 minutes and 29 seconds long loop, in which the ninjas infinitely steal the vase and replace it with a fake one. The sequenzes are little easter eggs, which should never be seen if the system works probaly.
For the installation, I use a backprojection to get a lifesized video image to diplay the ninjas in action. The table for the vase is as a little gimmick part of the installation. Because of that the composition reminds of a museum, where a thief tries to steal the precious old vase, but if someone looks he freezes.
I was lucky do get the chance to try the installation at betahaus in berlin, a coworking space. And a second time at Spiegel online in berlin.
The Project was part of my, Philipp Süß, bachelor thesis at University of Applied Sciences Hof my Supervising Professor was Prof. Michael Zöllner. Matt Belbin and Yu Watanabe did help me as ninjas and with the recording and lighting from the ninja video loop. A speacial thanks goes to cloud visual brand entertainment GmbH, which was the company I did at the time my internship in. Thanks to Andreas Dahrendorf for metoring. Sarah Thielsen is the pretty girl in the video. Jürgen Bertrams, Ali Saghri, Katrin Kaiser, Sandra Kaul, Maximilan Titze and Janine Süß did help me on the way to the project.
