The looking glass: Visually projecting yourself to the past

Abstract

Memories define us as individuals and are considered a special aspect of one's life. We try to preserve our memories as much as possible by taking pictures, videos, or through any form of documentation that we can revisit later on in our lives. Our goal is to design an immersive system that allows rich documentation of the past and interactive 3D-revisitation of the stored reflections in the future. Our prototype system, the Looking Glass captures human experiences and allows users to interactively explore them. Our system, unlike classic methods of documentation, extends the experience of visiting memories beyond viewing, and affords an immersive interactive experience. The Looking Glass is envisioned to provide a 3D visual experience of revisiting past scenes, allowing a more entertaining and emotionally engaging personal approach to re-experiencing past memories. This short paper presents our research motivation and design approach, details our implementation efforts, and current prototype. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.