Inspired by the numerous cats that live on New York University Abu Dhabi's campus and the interactions between them and the student body, this immersive 360° video takes viewers through a series of instructions on how to truly become a campus cat. Adopting the perspective of a cat that rarely exceeds one foot tall, this experience transforms the hallways, the stairs, the benches that we barely think twice about during our daily lives into new territories with a different spatial scale and spatial awareness.
GoPro Fusion was used to shoot this video. On top of that, the camera was placed such that the perspective of a cat (the viewing angle and relative positions of objects) was reproduced.
To mimic the movement of the cat in the stairway scene, we prototyped a low-fi pulley mechanism as can be seen below:
The 360° video was then cut into smaller snippets, each corresponds to a specific location on campus where the video was shot, and adapted to be an AR experience.
By scanning a poster with ZAPPAR (Zapworks), users could watch the video snippet being displayed on top of that poster which corresponds to that specific location on campus, creating an alternate experience within the viewers’ spatial awareness of being physically in that location.
This project was a collaboration between Leanne Talavera, Eunsu Choi, Meera Muhairi, and me.
