Interactive Installations with TouchDesigner & MediaPipe

Workshop Description

This workshop invites you into the world of interactive media art with TouchDesigner, focusing on accessible, sensor-based approaches to real-time body interaction using MediaPipe.

You’ll learn how to create installations and performances that respond to human presence, movement, and gestures — using nothing more than a webcam and a laptop. We’ll explore how to integrate MediaPipe, a powerful and free open-source tool developed by Google, directly into your TouchDesigner workflows. It enables real-time pose detection, hand tracking, and facial recognition without any external hardware.

Together, we’ll build interactive scenes where sound, visuals, and body motion come together — and dive into the creative possibilities that emerge when the human body becomes a live controller for media systems.

Through a series of hands-on exercises and mini-projects, you'll gain practical experience in working with live data streams and translating body gestures into visual or sonic expression. This workshop is designed for artists, educators, creative coders, and anyone curious about embodied interaction, generative systems, or digital performance.

Whether you're building your first interactive setup or looking for low-cost tools to expand your existing practice, this session offers an inspiring and accessible entry point into sensor-driven media art.

Requirements

Basic familiarity with TouchDesigner (the free Non-Commercial version is totally fine)

A laptop (Windows or macOS)

A webcam (built-in or external)

Curiosity and a willingness to experiment!

What You’ll Gain

A clear understanding of how to use MediaPipe for real-time interaction in TouchDesigner

Sample projects and networks you can build on after the workshop

Techniques for gesture-based control of visuals, sound, or space

Inspiration for creating sensor-driven artworks without expensive gear

About the workshop instructor

Maurice Cazzolli is an interdisciplinary artist who focuses on intersections between

different media. He deals with social, cultural, ecological and technical issues of the

present. Cazzolli‘s practice combines nature and digital worlds and draws attention to the

past and the future. In this way, he creates interactive installations that are imbued with

fiction and abstract realities.

Website: mauricecazzolli.com