Senior Project · Interactive Art Installation · 2026
An interactive art installation where you are the artwork. Your body, your movement, your presence — that's what drives everything you see.
YOU ARE THE VISUAL is an interactive audiovisual installation inspired by EDM and rave culture, where you are the main performer. Using a Kinect V2 sensor and TouchDesigner, the system tracks your body movement and audio frequencies in real time and turns them into live visuals. You are what drives everything on screen.
There is no image waiting for you. The piece only exists when you step into it. Every move you make, the way you raise your arms, shift your weight, or dance, gets read by the system and turned into a visual in real time. No two people move the same way, so no two experiences are ever the same. You are not watching the visuals. You are creating them.
When you walk in, you are not the audience. You are the artist, the canvas, and the mark all at once. Nothing happens until you show up.
A look at the process behind the installation, from early builds and TouchDesigner experiments to the final setup. Exhibition photos and footage have been added now that the project is complete.
This project started with my own experiences going to EDM festivals. Those events are not just about the music. They are full environments where light, visuals, motion, and technology all come together into something that feels alive. I have always been drawn to the way visuals respond to sound and to the people in the room. Being in those spaces made me realize that art does not have to be something you stand in front of and look at. It can be something you step into and become part of.
"Those festivals showed me that the best art pulls you in. It does not let you just watch."
I have also been really influenced by video work that uses visual effects and experimental techniques to push what a moving image can do. Seeing how motion graphics and digital effects can completely change the way something feels made me want to explore that in my own work, and eventually led me to thinking about how video and interaction could exist together in the same space.
This piece brings together everything I am interested in: video production, multimedia design, and interactive technology. Like the installations I have seen at festivals, it asks the audience to be part of the work rather than watch it from a distance. The goal was to make something that feels immediate and alive, where the line between the person and the artwork disappears. At the end of the day I just want people to feel something real when they step into it.
The installation runs on a Kinect V2 and TouchDesigner pipeline. The Kinect V2 sensor reads the full skeleton in real time, tracking joint positions, movement speed, and body orientation across 25 points. That data flows into TouchDesigner where a custom node network maps the body movement to generative visuals, things like geometry, particle systems, color, and motion, all responding to exactly what you are doing in the moment.
"Kinect sees you. TouchDesigner turns you into something else entirely."
A lot of the build process came down to two things: getting the movement tracking right and making the visuals feel reactive rather than mechanical. The Kinect data is noisy out of the box, so a lot of time went into smoothing it out, mapping movement ranges to visual parameters, and making sure everything responds without any noticeable lag. The visual system in TouchDesigner is designed to feel like something you would see at a rave, bright, kinetic, and tied to whoever is in the space.
The installation is also audio reactive. Your hands control the sound directly. Move your right hand left or right and you shift the pitch. Move your left hand up or down and you change the tone and frequency of the noise. So your body is driving both the visuals and the audio at the same time. Every gesture shapes what you see and what you hear. Your movement is the instrument.
YOU ARE THE VISUAL · Live Interactive Installation Demo · 2026
I'm Noah Gallardo, a 4th year student at UC San Diego studying Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts (ICAM). It is a program built around the overlap between technology, media, and creative practice. I am really passionate about filmmaking, mixed media, and interactive art. I have always believed that the most interesting things happen when technology and human expression start to blur together.
"The art that has always hit me hardest is the kind that pulls you in and makes you part of it."
A big part of how I think about art comes from electronic dance music, specifically the festivals and raves and the installations that live inside them. Those environments showed me art that cannot exist without the people in it. Light rigs reacting to sound, visuals built for a crowd that is moving. Watching VJs and visual artists create real time visuals for DJs and live shows made me see how technology can become something that genuinely moves people.
All of that feeds directly into YOU ARE THE VISUAL. The mixed media techniques I use in my own videos, layering, manipulation, real time transformation, show up here in a different form. Instead of working with footage, the installation works with you. Your body is the material. For me this project brings together everything I care about: filmmaking, digital media, interactive technology, and that energy you feel in a room full of people who do not realize they are performing.