We’re not sure where marketing people got the bright idea that 4-D — i.e. the fourth dimension — is not an expression from a physics book but rather the answer to the question: “What’s more awesome than 3-D?”
Don’t get us wrong. It appears that Live Park, an arty installation in Korea that uses body-tracking software, is a cool idea and something we’d like to try out. Anything that takes the possibilities of Kinect and RFID and stretches them to this degree deserves a tip o’ our antennae.
But the park’s subtitle is “4-D Art Factory” and, dude — so unnecessary. This is 3-D funtimes, to be sure. But if we tacked on one more dimension for reals, we’d have to bring in Al Einstein to explain spacetime and relativity and our head is already starting to hurt.
Gad. It’s like that marketing fad we went through in which every Gen-Now product was Xtra or Xtreme. And we got over that. Right? 4-D … feh.
Anyway, according to a writeup on The Creators Project blog, Live Park, created by Korean company d’strict, allows you to set up an avatar that stays connected to you throughout the park via an RFID-enabled bracelet. There are theaters, music shows, holographic performances and virtual reality games. It’s actually quite trippy.
The park was a temporary installation near Seoul, but there are plans for permanent parks in China and Singapore. What? How about Melbourne? Or Sydney? Hobart now has the NBN? Seriously, how many of you would like to try this out?
