This photo booth detects when subjects kiss, fires a high-tech OLED flash and captures the moment on a low-fi thermal print-out plus video.
Visitors to the booth stand on a "smart carpet" connected to a Makey Makey circuit board. When they make skin contact by touching or kissing, an electrical circuit is completed. This triggers the camera and causes an array of circular OLED lights (OLEDs: organic light-emitting diodes; emit light across a surface rather than from a point.) to provide a flash of light. A thermal printer then prints a photo.
The first version of Thermobooth was housed in a found Ikea chest of drawers and presented at a party in Vienna earlier this year. It was really ugly but it did the trick and the guests went quite mad about it. The studio then approached lighting brand OSRAM, who provided circular OLEDs to power the flash. Even when the resistance is lowered the OLEDs still gives out more light. Also, they don't blind the eyes and have a beautiful soft illuminating quality to it. The studio decided to stick with thermal printouts because thermal printing is quick and dirty in its look and it holds some of the nostalgia of instant analogue photography. The final version of the project features an irregular cloud of circular, mirror-fronted OLEDs mounted on painted steel poles. A thermal printer is housed in a triangular orange box set atop further steel poles.
I feel that Thermobooth not only captures a physical image but it captures the feeling the subjects felt in that particular moment when their skin comes into contact and the flash illuminates and amplifies everything in that very time frame. This project focuses on human contact which is very much taken for granted in the current fast-paced and materialized society.
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