AURA is an interactive media installation that deepens the embodied experience of viewing one’s own digital reflection on a screen by allowing viewers to display playful animations over a live video feed. Using motion tracking with PoseNet by ml5.js, the program tracks user’s movements and displays corresponding p5.js coded animations, giving the appearance of the digital world and the physical world merging.  

The live video feed creates an uncanny sensation as viewers see their movements mirrored to them in the screen, departing from the usual display mode for front facing cameras. As a viewer moves their arms the screen acts as a digital mirror and reflects their movements, revealing animations over and around the viewer’s body. The six animations make use of speed, hue, transparency, and size to create a dynamic and responsive viewing experience. The animations play over the viewer’s digital reflection and draw attention to different parts of the viewer’s body and the space they occupy.  

The project examines how viewing our bodies within this context creates a pleasant tension between how we experience ourselves physically, and how our movements are rendered and distorted when a screen becomes a mirror. Viewers who experience AURA describe the effect of seeing these animations overlapping their body on the screen as calming, empowering, exciting, and intriguing as they play and explore the interactive nature of the project. AURA offers viewers new opportunities to view themselves in a digital, physical hybrid space.