Stars Above
an interactive projection of the night sky
Thendral Prabu
Thendral Prabu is a game designer, programmer, set designer, and VR developer who enjoys building experiences in different types of media. Thendral is completing a B.S. in Computer Science and B.A. in Interactive Multimedia.
Why Stars?
Every night after a day’s work, we would look up at the New Hampshire sky, so clear you could see the purple speckles of the Milky Way Galaxy sprinkled amongst the glowing stars. During my internship at the Peterborough Players last summer, I met many people passionate about theater, but the lifelong city dweller and the countryside star enthusiast alike were entranced what nightfall brought. Especially when August came around, we spent our nights around a fire roasting marshmallows and watching the sky closely for shooting stars.
With Stars Above, I wanted to bring that shared experience of looking up at the stars on a clear night and enjoying their presence so much that you can almost touch them. My hope is that I bring a piece of that mysticality that the night sky has down to the ground by letting people play with the night sky.
What is Stars Above?
Stars Above is a projection of the night sky that you can play with. When you move, so do the stars, bringing a whole new meaning to reaching for the stars.
The project went through several different iterations before I landed on this one, especially since working with the Kinect was difficult. The Kinect, while it’s fun to play with during testing, is extremely difficult to find any kind of documentation for because Microsoft discontinued support for it and any sample projects online are also several years old and incompatible with my work.