A surface covered with black sand turns into a pool full of life when people grab and remove a handful of sand away. In this micro-world, virtual creatures are born, live and perish.They recognize their spatial boundaries and obstacles of living and respond to peoples' touch in various ways.
      A real-time computer vision engine has been developed to interpret the physical status of diverse materials of the installation. The program populates creatures with various characteristics and controls their behaviors in real-time. A swarm intelligence has been implemented to simulate the flocking behaviors of the creatures and their life-like motions.
      The Oasis is not a device invented for people to 'use'. It's a playful space where people feel nature, find life forms, interact with and create virtual worlds. It elicits peoples' basic instincts to touch natural materials.

• Exhibitions
•   - Oasis II, 12th Japan Media Arts Festival Tokyo, Japan (2009)
•   - Oasis II, Electronics Alive V Tampa, Florida (2009)
•   - Oasis II, Ars Electronica Center Linz, Austria (2009)
•   - Oasis II, Siggraph 2008, Slow Art Los Angeles, U.S. (2008)
•   - Oasis I, Exit Strategies, UCLA D|MA MFA exhibition Los Angeles, U.S. (2008)

      Oasis II is the non-photorealistic rendition of Oasis with a high-definition display. Everything that contributes to its outlook has been rebuilt from the scratch again. Creatures look like vivid pencil sketches on a canvas.

      Oasis I used various natural materials: sand, pebbles, water & leaves.
      The major interaction people can enjoy with <OASIS - sand> is shaping a pond and watching creatures staying in it. People enjoyed shaping complicated territories, making canals between large ponds or trapping creatues in small areas. Also, creatures are designed to avoid pebbles that people placed inside the pond area and get surprised when people make a loud noise by dropping pebbles.
      With <OASIS - water>, creatures have a tendency to chase the leaves floating on the water. As people find out the translucent forms of creatures underneath the leaves, they tend to take the leaves away, and simultaneously, the creatures start to chase and hide under their new target, the nearest leaf.

      Technics visualizing the diverse motions of water creatures, mapping and morphing of textures and simulating surface ripples have been invenstigated. Cummulative sine waves, Perlin noise and dynamics of a spring mesh network have been implemented to render the virtual world of Oasis.