The Raven HoloLens Transformation Mask

Art takes many forms, whether highly technical like the act of designing a new computer chip, or traditional, such as painting a landscape or maybe even a bird. When traditional art forms are infused with technology, however, new and exciting things can result, such as Shawn Hunt’s HoloLens Transformation Mask.

This device, which takes the form of a Raven’s head, looks interesting when closed, including relatively normal lines, and illuminated outlines of the mouth and eyes. The eyes themselves are animated via Windows Phones.

The mask, though, becomes much more exciting, or perhaps even frightful, when it splits into three illuminated sections to reveal a human inside wearing a HoloLens. The person wearing the mask is surrounded by an array of LED strips, and in turn is treated to a unique experience, seeing the the world from inside this mask, along with as a sketch of the raven’s lines on fire overlaid on his or her field of view.

The experience is coordinated by the HoloLens via Bluetooth, and multiple Arduino boards are used to control the LED strips and mask movement. The mask, which measures a meter long and is supported while worn, was first built as a paper prototype by Hunt, then 3D-printed at the Microsoft Garage Facility in Vancouver.

The project took nearly 300 hours of printing on top of all of the other work that went into it! You can read more about it here.

[h/t: On Microsoft / Digital Trends]