The Esquire House is an event series put on by Esquire in NY and LA every year where Esquire creates a signature space for the “Ultimate Bachelor.” Hush was charged with the responsibility of designing the Home Office for the 2011 Esquire House, and reached out to Occurrent Arts to take the research Brian had done with “the surface” fabric instrument in 2010 and extrapolate it into a beautiful futuristic interface for the “Ultimate Bachelor.”
Acura was our sponsor, and with inspiration from their super handling all wheel drive diagrams we designed a system of flowing energy which the user can manipulate by pressing into the surface.
We wrote a custom particle system in Cinder ( C++ ) and used a specialized infra-red camera beneath the membrane to interpret how the fabric is pressed. We took audio samples from an Acura vehicle and with Max/Msp and Ableton assigned different regions of the surface to trigger them, like a piano. No matter where or how you played with the surface you got a beautifully visceral audio-visual experience.