Flow Attractor

Flow Attractor is an installation designed for exhibition purposes. It represents a low-threshold interaction offer for exhibition visitors. The program can be filled with any number of images. The user is recorded with a connected webcam and can interact with the displayed images by moving them around and folding them away.

The program is essentially based on OpenCV and Box2D. OpenCV is an image processing library. It is used to address the camera and to calculate the optical flow. The optical flow is a vector field that represents the current speed of movement of the individual pixels. This velocity field is transferred to the input images represented by rigid bodies by simulating a viscous medium's flow. In addition to the flow simulation forces, repulsive forces between the bodies also affect the individual images. These are modeled according to Coulomb's law, and should ensure that the images are evenly distributed over the screen if there is no interaction.