Located on the first floor of the Stata Center, CSAIL’s Flow is an interactive visual experience where the motions and images of visitors are incorporated in real time into a variety of beautiful and natural fluid flow, particle systems, and image processing simulations.

The installation uses a camera and Kinect depth sensor. The sensor detects motion allowing visitors to manipulate the simulations by their movements. The camera allows visitors to appear in the simulations. Flow’ cycles through a variety of different visual effects, each lasting about one minute.

Flow was created by computer scientist and digital artist Karl Sims, an MIT alum (B.S.’84 and M.S. ’87) and MacArthur Fellow (class of 1998). Sims has authored landmark papers in computer graphics and exhibits globally. Check out his official Flow page, which includes a tutorial with technical details about the visual effects.

A note on privacy: the camera does not record anyone.