Jack in the Box



The Jack-in-the-Box application grew out of a desire to create something fun and active, as opposed to the more serene pace of the Swallows piece. This piece was originally designed as an element in Jim Barr's Great Sandini Circus . This application, like a shooting gallery, lets the CAVE guest shoot missles at a moving target. The target is a Jack-in-the-Box springs up, then bobs crazily waiting to be hit . The CAVE guest uses the CAVE's wand to shoot snowballs at the jack heads. When the Jacks are sucessfully hit they complain.



The jacks uses a grab-bag of graphical techniques to make them look the way they do. The body is a single spring chain length. The head bobbing is acheived using a quaternion aligned along the last few lengths of the spring chain. The head is a displaced sphere. The displacement is a function of the green component of an rgb image. The image is also texture mapped onto the deformed sphere. The image here does a double duty: providing the shape and coloring of the head. The snowballs and yellow 'sparkles' are particles.



The Great Sandini Circus, was a collaborative project between several art students here at E.V.L. Just like a real circus/fair the Circus had a midway with tents. Each tent was a special place. There was a food court, where the CAVE visitor could feed huge hungry mouths, there was a freak show tent where, as it turns out you were the freak! My tent was the Jack-in-the-Box shooting gallery.


In The latest version of the jacks, they shoot back if they are being shot at. Just desserts I think!