How it works

"Point-to-Point" combines the text input of Internet users with the physical movement of museum goers to create an animated luminous display of text projected on the wall. On the Point-to-Point web site (http://potatoland.org/point), users input their answer to the question, "Who are you?" then use their mouse to draw the answer on the screen. In the museum, a surveillance camera detects the presence of viewers in front of the artwork, and software translates their movement into trails of text on the wall.

The artwork becomes a window through which visitors online and in the museum can see the actions on the 'other side' as they happen. The artwork uses a surveillance camera to watch the space in front of the artwork in the museum.

Robotics vision tracking software detects the presence of people in the space, and turns their movements into screen coordinates. These coordinates are transmitted over the web to a modified chat server that relays people's movements to anyone viewing the "Point-to-Point" applet at that time. The vision software, "CMVision", is used in robotics projects and was developed by James Bruce at Carnegie Mellon University.