The world’s largest selfie machine
By Andrew Gregory. Posted
This article was originally published as part of HackSpace magazine, which has since been incorporated into Raspberry Pi Official Magazine.
This is As We Are, a 14-foot tall interactive sculpture imagined by Matthew Mohr and built by DCL, a Boston-based company, specialising in fabricating really cool things.
It’s built out of layers of contoured aluminium, covered in custom SANSI LED modules, comprising 850 000 individual LEDs. In the back of the head there’s a photo booth, with 32 Raspberry Pis and Camera Modules, controlled by custom facial recognition software that finds your face, flattens it, and maps it onto the LEDs on the exterior of the sculpture, making your face twice as high as André the Giant.
As We Are is located in the Greater Columbus Convention Center in Columbus, Ohio; it was inspired when Matthew wanted a project to show off the diversity of the city.
This struck us as a brilliant project for a couple of reasons. The first is that it’s a giant version of the Frank Sidebottom head. The second is that, at its heart, it’s just some Raspberry Pis, Camera Modules and LED screens, meaning that it should be possible to make one of these yourself (OK, a much smaller, lower resolution one, but technically similar). Go forth and give it a go.
Features Editor Andrew trawls the internet for Cool Stuff while keeping the magazine running smoothly.
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