52 Card Cinema: 52 Card Psycho

Authored by Geoffrey Alan Rhodes
Published by Future Cinema Lab, York University in 2010

52 Card Cinema is an installation-based investigation into cinematic structures and interactive cinema viewership. The concept is simple: 52 cards, each printed with a unique identifier, are replaced in the subject's view by the individual shots that make up a movie scene. The cards can be stacked, dealt, arranged in their original order or re-composed in different configurations, creating spreads of time. The technology used is marker-based augmented reality, where special printed markers are recognized in the video feed and pass data regarding their unique identifier, their position, and their orientation. The computer then feeds a display overlaying the video clips of each shot onto the appropriate card and continually mapping their position and orientation.