While debating how to name our newest SocialScreen product, we threw dozens of names into the proverbial hat. This hat started to resemble one of Magritte’s dour derbies as the names became more and more surreal. I won’t list them here but suffice it to say, each struggled to capture the sense of wonder this new interactive wall product creates in its users.

Of course, being children of a certain generation, we were avoiding the inevitable “WonderWall.” In our lifetimes, there have been at least two other “wonder walls” – the late 60s film by Joe Massot (with a soundtrack by then Beatle George Harrison no less) and Oasis, Beatle wannabes, whose mid-90s tune references it.

Urban Dictionary has three definitions that range from an object of obsession to: “A barrier which separates the mundane from the Transcendent Reality. A true Wonderwall will always have…an opening which allows anyone a glimpse of what lies beyond.”

For our purposes, this definition has a lot of appeal though we like to think of the Snibbe Interactive WonderWall™ is less a barrier and more of a door to the imagination. The WonderWall invites visitors to move and manipulate customized virtual objects in a an interactive experience unlike anything else. For Chicago’s Adler Planetarium, a space-themed WonderWall features a virtual telescopic lens that peers into deep space, space-walking astronauts, and the Mars Rover you build yourself. Each exhibit engages both visitors’ minds and bodies as they maneuver the inviting animations on screen.

With Snibbe Interactive’s WonderWall,the customization possibilities are endless, though all are bound to be fun and physical and sure to inspire, yep, wonder.

With Avatar, director James Cameron built the most immersive virtual world that has ever been created on-screen. Now, Snibbe Interactive brings the futuristic technology and alien ecology to life in Avatar: The Exhibition at Seattle’s Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum – open through September 2012. The exhibition is about as true-blue a fan can get without body paint.

Using Snibbe Interactive’s SocialScreen platform, visitors are invited to wade into Pandora’s ecology and mingle with simulated woodsprites. In the exhibit, luminescent floating jellyfish-like creatures glide through a high definition projection of the planet’s verdant forest. The glowing woodsprites descend upon visitor’s shadows when they remain still, and skitter away when visitors move suddenly, just like the magical creatures in the movie.

During the production of Avatar, director James Cameron used a “virtual camera” to move within and capture Pandora’s three-dimensional landscape. Snibbe Interactive recreated this process with a Virtual Camera exhibit in which visitors can become a director, creating their own unique version of scenes created with the identical 3-D material the production’s visual artists created for the film.

Similarly, SocialStage replicates the real-time “performance capture” of Avatar’s actors. When you step into SocialStage’s glowing room and begin to shake your blue booty, it’s not merely a Na’vi simulacrum – it’s the same 3D models in which actors Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana injected their creative energies. It’s the same digital DNA, making your Avatar and theirs digital half-siblings.

Snibbe Interactive’s multi-touch display, the SocialTable Touch, provides an intuitive interface to showcase trivia, images, video and other ephemera behind the Avatar experience. It’s like a Na’vi-sized iPad! Drop special shapes onto the table and rings of material spin out, allowing you to endlessly explore the concept art and alien ecology created to make Pandora feel so real.

“Step right up!” the carnival barkers would, well, bark to induce suckers to test their strength with ye olde hammer and bell game. The so-called “highstriker” attraction was a fixture in the carnivals and theme-parks of yore, until the 1930s when Popular Mechanics revealed most of them were “fixed.” Hustling he-men aside, the reason highstrikers were so popular (and still occasionally cameo in our culture) is for the same three reasons a successful interactive displays work today.

They’re both…

Physical – But instead of the blunt force of a mallet, an interactive exhibit uses a far more elegant form of engagement – the movements of the visitor’s entire body. Using invisible sensor technologies, a visitor can move unencumbered and elicit myriad effects depending on the exhibit (see examples). Such interactivity short-circuits the rational mind and reinforces an emotional connection to the experience. Ding!

Emotional – An interactive display delights and inspires by responding directly to its user’s actions, which creates a feed loop of positively reinforced results – the more your interact with it, the more satisfying the experience becomes (unlike the highstriker, which makes your muscles as sore as your ego). Like real life, which isn’t fixed with a set outcome (like no bell), an interactive exhibit is always changing, producing infinite variations while responding to the user’s image, silhouette, gestures or masculine displays of upper body strength (okay, maybe not the last one).

Social – Whereas the bell-ringers are likely showing off to their date or peers, an interactive wall like Snibbe Interactive’s SocialScreen, for example, encourages a group dynamic, which is more constructive than it is competitive. In fact, the more people interact with an exhibit, the more dynamic it becomes. Try this with the highstriker hammers and it’ll look like a game of polo gone tragically awry.

What’s more, the rewards of engaging with an interactive exhibit are far more satisfying than, say, the stuffed animal one might win. Visitors gain a shared memory that connects them and their friends and colleagues with an experience that deepens their relationship with the exhibitor’s brand or event — as well as to each other. Step right up and ring our bell!

You’re at some trendy restaurant and a waiter with all the hirsute hipness of Russell Brand (but none of the pluck) wafts to your table and recites of the specials by rote. Once you’re impressed with the joint’s preparations of exotic animal parts (en francais, of course), the waiter will then botch your order and overcharge you for the privilege. It’s the tax one pays for being so outré.

While I was recently enduring this kind of experience, Snibbe Interactive’s Social Tables (tabletop multi-touch interaction for education, entertainment, branding and digital signage) came to mind as a means of staving off my inevitable foodie FAIL. Though our engineers consider it sacrilege to even consider dining atop one these finely-prepared servings of art and technology (I too do not recommend eating off high-tech art) I salivated at the possibilities of poking through an interactive menu, a live video stream from the kitchen, pop-up explanations of whatever it is that “haute cuisine” means or the latest trend spotted at the Fancy Foods culinary trade show – all available by merely stroking the screen.

And why not? Of the future-forward restaurants listed on, say, UrbanSpoon, many have equipped their waitstaff with iPads. An interactive table functions much the same way touch-based controls – so let’s cut out the middle man. Sure, my colleagues think I’m mad but it’s not like I’m suggesting we get all Ginsu like the teppanyaki tables at Benihana, I just think there are better ways to experience information that’s as easy to use as eating finger food. And though I don’t advocate playing with one’s food, playing with “virtual” food could whet one’s appetite for a four-course informational experience with side dishes that never have to be bussed.

Our SocialTable-based “Health Choices” game, for example, integrates experiential learning with a fun user-interface that tallies in real-time the results of one’s health-related choices (video below). This can be customized for all manner of applications, from hospitality to hospitals. I for one, would like to see “etiquette training” touch table for waitstaff. The interactive display could teach you how to properly set a table using virtual flatware (salad forks go on the outside, Russell). And, for once, it’s okay to put your elbows on the table (something interesting will happen). Let’s do lunch.

Duck and cover.

The early days of interactive exhibits are littered with heartbreak and a fair amount of shattered glass. Consider Dada pioneer Marcel Duchamp who is often credited with creating one of the first interactive installations with his breakthrough (um, literally) Rotary Glass Plates installation.

“Rotary Glass Plates is a motorized device that demonstrates the continuity of visual impressions,” explains the exhibit notes at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, where the interactive installation is currently on display. “Its five glass blades are painted so that when set in motion and viewed head-on, the machine forms concentric circles on a single plane.”

The work required the viewer to activate the machine and observe it, straight on, one meter away – hence, the purported interactivity. For 1920, this was cutting edge – in more ways than one. Duchamp’s pal, photographer Man Ray, intended to capture the experiment, however, when they turned it on a belt broke and snagged a piece of the glass that went glancing off the photographer’s forehead. Fortunately, it shattered only when it hit the floor.

Though we applaud Duchamp’s early efforts at creating an interactive experience, be assured, Snibbe Interactive’s Social Screen won’t raise your museum’s insurance premium. The only moving parts are your visitors themselves as they dance, interact and generally cavort in a virtual environment that’s a window into the imagination sans the glass. Sure, Duchamp might say “no pane no gain” but we say an interactive museum installation shouldn’t require one to duck to be interactive.

The recent release of Microsoft’s Kinect* has raised the profile of our time-tested 3D tracking interfaces. To support the demand for full 3d sensing, Snibbe Interactive has now adapted all of its large SocialScreen interactive wall products to work on the LCD Display of our SocialMirror platform. To get started, just plug it into an outlet and the system auto-calibrates and runs within moments, requiring no special background behind visitors.

In an exciting development, as of the beginning of 2011, all or our systems now support the Kinect Camera in addition to the industrial depth-sensing cameras we already offer. Watch the video below to see some of our most popular immersive titles running on SocialMirror with Kinect! And, even better, you can purchase these titles immediately for museum, entertainment, and marketing applications. Our shipping systems run with time-tested industrial depth-sensing cameras, and don’t need to wait for the eventual release of Microsoft’s commercial SDK sometime later this year. Of course, we’ll be excited once this license is approved by Microsoft and we can offer the Kinect as part of our suite of cameras.

*Kinect is a trademark of Microsoft

Watch the new video below for a selection from the wide range of InfoTiles interactive walls that we’ve installed for museums, entertainment, and marketing.

1) At the Guinness Museum in LA, people discover the top records of Hollywood stars.

2) Dell used InfoTiles at a tradeshow to deliver a complex message on custom software with ease and humor.

3) The College Basketball Hall of Fame uses Infotiles to explore its history.

4) Prudential used Infotiles to colorfully highlight ways of using social media.

5) The Singapore Science Center used InfoTiles to teach about penguins.

6)  Floodgate Investments highlighted its investments in Twitter and Digg.

7) The Miami Science Museum uses an expanded version of InfoTiles that asks questions about sustainability, letting people literally vote with their feet. Many more are coming your way this year!

Just on the tail of March Madness, we have a new customization of InfoTiles to share, customized with historic video and graphics from the history of college basketball. Courtesy of College Basketball Experience in Kansas City, Missouri, we were able to install this experience in Las Vegas earlier this month. Watch the video:

Also attached to the InfoTiles interactive wall is a SocialShare video email station to share videos online for viral marketing. Visitors can make, send, and post videos to social networks (Facebook, YouTube, Myspace) like the one below:

IAAPA (The International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions) published their February Funworld Magazine last week with an article that prominently mentions Snibbe Interactive’s new technologies for interactive digital signage. Of most interest is the new SocialMirror platform that uses LCD screens and a three-dimensional depth-sensing camera to measure people’s full-body movements without any special background; the platform also precisely tracks the number of impressions and dwell-time of people in the experiences. The article also discusses the SocialShare platform’s ability to share personalized experiences created in digital signage applications online in Facebook and other social networks. SocialNet allows hundreds or even thousands of SocialMirrors to be connected into an interactive digital signage network for stores, franchise, or advertising networks. These new technologies show great promise for high-traffic, low-space environments including retail, public digital signage networks, theme parks, and other public franchises.

Snibbe Interactive recently completed three new interactive exhibits at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry for You! The Experience. This groundbreaking exhibition creates a nonlinear social multi-user experience that mirrors the way people experience media today – through the lens of the personal, social, and online.

As the centerpiece of the exhibition, MSI commissioned Snibbe Interactive to create a twenty-four foot wide multi-projector interactive wall that accommodates dozens, and sometimes hundreds of simultaneous visitors.

The purpose of Get in the Action is simply to get people to move as if they were in an sporting class. In the center of a large screen a video coach demonstrates one of four activities: Basketball, Hip Hop Dancing, Tai Chi, and Yoga. As people follow along, magical motion effects create on-screen trails that outline their past movements, inspired by sports science analysis and visualizations similar to those that professional athletes use. These trails make the audience excited to follow along. In a free play session, people’s outlines overlap in an open-ended experience that encourages even the shyest person to dance and play with his body. Get in the Action can hold people for long durations and promotes physical exercise and social engagement.

Laugh Garden is a cluster of monitors with video faces that play on each screen. When people move in front of a monitor, the face begins to chuckle, to laugh, and eventually to roar. The greater each person’s movement, the greater the laughter. Groups of people can make the whole garden laugh together, and the laughter spreads quickly to the visitors themselves creating a social experience. The exhibit utilizes our newer depth-sensing three-dimensional SocialMirror technologies.

With Support Networks people create personalized collages about their network of friends and family. Using a touchscreen monitor, a person enters her name, which appears at the center of a large wall-mounted display. Next, the visitor enters the names of several friends. As the visitor answers questions about her social relationships, the names of people who provide more support become larger and larger. With our SocialShare add-on, the collages can be posted directly to Facebook and other social networks, or emailed to friends.