seidesein is an interactive environment, which explores communication in virtual 3D space.
Two users are embedded into virtual space each via an "avatar", which is a virtual veil-like mirror, i.e. a mirror which feels like a silky veil floating in a water-like substance. The veil-like mirror of each user is controlled via an input device called gametrak of the company In2Games.
This works in the following way:
The position of the two hands of a user can be tracked via the gametrak by means of two straps which are pulled out of the gametrak-box. The physical resistance which is experienced when pulling the straps feels like lifting something. This "lifting" corresponds to the virtual lifting of the veil-like mirror in virtual space. A movement of the two hands of a user corresponds thus to a movement of the upper two corners of his/her virtual veil, which is subject to a virtual gravitational force, or - in other words - such a movement changes the position and shape of the virtual veil, just as if you would move around a real veil (in a substance) by holding it at two corners.
The videoimage of the users is read in via two webcams (one for each user) and streamed onto their corresponding veils in such a way that each video image is distorted according to the movement of the corresponding veil (the distortion is similar to the distortion of one's mirror image on a nonplanar mirror). Hence each user sees oneself and the other on a "fluid mirror" in virtual space.
Colours and specular highlights emphazise the associations of silk and water, however we didnt intend to model real water.
seidesein is - amongst others - a study on the concept of (nonhaptic) "touch" in virtual environments. Two users can dance together in virtual space and "touch" each other by their movements and glances.

-> see seidesein teaser.

seidesein can be experienced on a home computer as well as in bigger setups like a virtual reality theatre. This is due to the platform independency of the underlying software called jReality.jreality is an opensource project. Tim is a main developper of jReality.
seidesein works in principle also via a network, in particular via the internet. The quality of seideseins remote dance depends on the quality of the transmission of the videosignal only. The veil performance is computed locally on the respective home computer. For that you don't need a super computer, however a good (but not super) graphics card is of advantage. We sort of currently work on the implementation of the network feature.

seidesein was shown on the trampoline night of trampoline / radiator festival on Oct. 12 in Berlin.
-> see blog entry about the trampoline night event

seidesein was invited to take part at the annual conference ''New Media and Technologies of the IT Society'' (''Neue Medien und Technologien der Informationsgesellschaft'') which ran under the title ''Film, Computer and TV'' at the academy of sciences in Berlin from July 19 to 21, 2006
-> blog entry about the conference
-> paper in nmi2006 proceedings (preprint) in german