Interactive Van Gogh Opens new Vistas

Petros Vrellis is a young Greek engineer from Ioannina, whose name went viral on the Internet because of his impresssive interactive template that animates Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night.

A fluid simulation gently creates a flowing fabric from Van Gogh’s impressionist portrait of the Milky Way and night sky over Saint-Rémy in France, using the thick paint daubs as the particles within the fluid.

A touch interface allows the viewer to deform the image, altering both the flow of the particles and the synthesized sound, and then watch it slowly return to its original state. But Vrellis is also the brains behind, the first in Greece -and maybe in Europe- interactive bookstore window, in Patras.

Using depth sensing technology by Microsoft Kinect, the application allows passersby to select and flip through books that roll on display on the shop-window, thanks to a projector and a laptop, installed just behind it.