VTLZR @Zenith Paris

VTLZR @Zenith Paris:re-blog from 1024 Architecture
Wow, just wow.

We had an amazing show this week end at the Paris Zenith – the show was sold out -

Here are some pictures, which unfortunately do not properly render the mood of the show, as the lights were moving amazingly fast, in sync to the music.

Since we were playing “at home”, we had the opportunity to add a few fixtures to the setup, namely 20 Martin Viper, 20 more Shaprys (60 in total) and a grand total of 32 Atomic Strobs, all remotely controlled by Vitalic’s computer – on stage – from Ableton Live.
It was the perfect show according to our standards, everything went fine, despite 2 computer reboot during the show – thanks to the super tech team nobody noticed – and some heavy hum coming from the Midi cable … grrrr
Next show is in Cran-Montana, Swiss.







And the last one, which looks like a proof that 1024 is actually bending the light … ;) Space Warp anyone ?

Abies Electronicus 2.0 videoReport

Abies Electronicus 2.0 videoReport:
Finally, here’s the video report of Abies Electronicus,



shot in Brussels, BE, 2012.
technical info for da nerd:

4 Video Projectors 20k @1024*768

each projector was Space Scanned using MadMapper

Custom QC based software

26 LED rgb fixtures

DMX flashlights

DMX control over the existing facades

Lots of custom QC plugins

Running entirely off a single MacPro

VTLZR: live in Rockhal NEW 1024 Architect's work of art

VTLZR: live in Rockhal:
Tonight in Luxembourg at Rockhal.

Automatically Projection Mapping a 3D, Moving Object: White Kanga Show Stunning Tech

Automatically Projection Mapping a 3D, Moving Object: White Kanga Show Stunning Tech:

Hide’n'Seek – Technology Demo from White Kanga on Vimeo.
Automatically map an object with a projector. Keep the mapping working as the object moves. And, oh yeah, look damned fine while doing it.
That’s the neat trick Poland-based White Kanga have pulled off, powered by TouchDesigner. We’ve been following their work before:
Robotic Mapping Pulls a Model Building, Tron-Like, Into the Virtual
Projection Mapping, with Robotics, Goes Further to Augmenting Reality: MPS Demo [TouchDesigner]
Here, we get to really see it in action. It doesn’t hurt that you get cool graphics visualizing the calibration. It’s an internal tool, but it demonstrates a lot of what’s possible.
I was in Poland for their national day yesterday, but watching this video makes me want to start waving around the white and red flag and cheering on this crew. (Or, if they like, whatever flag/mascot they choose.) Brilliant work.

The Augmented City: Istanbul’s Data, Made Visible in Glitchy Structures

Our century is marked by a wash of data, flooding out of explosive urbanization. Humans and numbers, it seems, are now densely packed, dynamic, and essential. Yet with that same density, they threaten to become invisible.
The challenge of visualists: break the barrier to reveal that unseen world. Call it data mapping.
“Augmented Structures” is, first and foremost, rather lovely to look at. It’s a kind of architectural performance, in glitching, flickering contrasts of sound and light. Maybe the scale of transformation requires something aesthetic. Here’s what co-creator Refik Anadol has to say about it – thanks, Refik, for sending in your work.

‘Augmented Structures v2.0′ by Refik Anadol and Alper Derinbogaz is a distilled urban experience project which focuses on two dissimilar regions in istanbul and displays the inner characteristics of the texture of a city-center that has undergone a recent transformation within a suburban region consisting of gated communities. Presented at Istanbul Design Biennial within the ‘Musibet’ exhibition curated by local architect Emre Arolat, the work is based on soundscape and data mapping of two regions reveals the invisible information about their context and suggests an alternative way to understand the existence of urbanization through new media technologies.
By bringing disparate disciplines like sound, architecture and visual arts together, the development re-examines the world in aesthetic terms, in its capacity as an ‘interdisciplinary transformation’. ‘augmented structures series forces each discipline to alter its own ‘material’ state; transforming sound into mathematics, mathematics into architecture and architecture into a living structure, while presenting the viewer with a new media experience that is multi-levelled, produces sound, moves and breathes.’

The project in this case is augmented sculpture, beamed onto a structure. But I wonder how this same data might become part of the tapestry of architecture or urban experience. Perhaps that’s not where it belongs – maybe it’s best kept independent, a mirror in art. Whatever the context, it’s only natural that this substance of our age, data, would become artistic medium, rendered in terms as changing and fluid as it is.
More:

The team is diversified by sound designer Kerim Karaoglu and parametric designers Coşku Cinkılıç, Koray Bingöl. — at Istanbul Modern | Istanbul Museum of Modern Art.

Thanks to; IKSV, Emre Arolat, Nil Aynalı, Özlem Yalım Özkaraoğlu, Salon2, Antilop, Can Buyukberber, Başar Yurtçu.

From the same artist, Refik Anadol, here’s an intervention in urban space, with more fluid projections – and, again, a sonic element:

Augmented Structures v1.1 : Acoustic Formations / Istiklal Street from Refik Anadol on Vimeo.


Augmented Structures v1.1 : Acoustic Formations / Istiklal Street from Refik Anadol on Vimeo.

Augmented Structures v1.1 : Acoustic Formations / Istiklal Street

Architecture and (Media) Design are art forms that exist independently from one another. Over the last few years they have been growing together. They are entering into symbiotic dependencies and stimulations. Against the background of the information technologies, architecture has gained a new reality. No longer are objects or processes the constituting elements of a building. Now they are described as technical networks of communicating nodes, which balance themselves in contrived patterns.

“Augmented Structures v1.1 : Acoustic Formations/Istiklal Street” is an augmented structure, an installation by Refik Anadol and Alper Derinboğaz which is created through the use of innovative parametric architecture and audiovisual techniques. The projects deals with a new mediated space: How to translate the logic of media into architecture? In this first experiment field recordings of Istiklal Street will be transformed in to parametric architectural structure. The recordings were made by Kerim Karaoglu who also used these recordings to create an electro-acoustical composition. The project seeks interactions between space, sound, visual and light. A similar connection between architecture and media has been experienced in Philips Pavilion of Le Courbusier in 1958.

Beyond being an artwork this installation is an urban experience. The scale of surface, 2000sqm, and the dominance of the location will definitely take place in collective memory of İstiklal Street visitors.

There will be an exhibition opening on 20th of September at 19:30 in relation to this façade installation which showcases experiments of architecture- sound – visual correlations of Refik Anadol and Alper Derinbogaz.

During the night visual performance will be projected on the structure which will be accompanied with a generatively designed contemporary aesthetic visuals consisting of input data from the recordings and their transformed versions synchronized to the movement of graphics re-shaping and transforming the structure on which they are projected. The structure in turn influences and transforms the projections as well.

For more information: augmentedstructures.com

Refik Anadol / New Media Artist

refikanadol.com

Alper derinbogaz / Architect

salon2.info

Sound Design: Kerim Karaoglu

VVVV Realtime Graphics: Sebastian Neitsch

Projection Infrastructure: Visio-vox

augmentedstructures.com

An Ethereal Water Projection in Belfast

An Ethereal Water Projection in Belfast:

DSNT// Water Projection from DSNT on Vimeo.
Expect some serious brightness to make it work, but water can be an ethereal, otherworldly surface for light, blurring the lines between substance and image.
Oisín O’Brien of DSNT sends this brief but beautiful work from Belfast. DSNT are busy, too, providing both musical content and visual design for this creation.
Oisín shares some technical details with CDM:

The screen of water was created by a series of jets which where mounted on the & floated out into the lake. The jets created a haze which carried the light, to get the amount of light that was needed we used a 12k lumens christie projector.

Specifics:

Visuals on misty water screen.

Projector provided by third source.

Track : Mark Rogan – Paranoia (FSG Remix) – DSNT Records

Video: Behind The Scenes of Flying Lotus’ “Layer 3″ Visuals

Video: Behind The Scenes of Flying Lotus’ “Layer 3″ Visuals:
We're always fascinated by new concepts for onstage DJ and live performance booths, and after taking an office field trip last week to see Flying Lotus in Oakland, we were excited to see this new video crop up from Red Bull Music Academy. The... Read more

Mapping, Beyond Projectors: ArKaos Adds Serious Plug-and-Play Pixel, LED Features

Mapping, Beyond Projectors: ArKaos Adds Serious Plug-and-Play Pixel, LED Features:re-blog from CreateDigitalMotion

ArKaos promises to make output to LED surfaces easier. Marco from ArKaos explains what we see here: “[This is the] Kling-Net mapper working with MediaMaster in Simple mode. In simple mode each layer can be sent to the video mapper or the Kling-Net mapper. In this screen shot layer 1 goes to Kling-Net and layer 2 goes to the video surface.”

It sounds like the computer system on a Bird of Prey on Star Trek, but Kling-Net is at the heart of where VJ and media server maker ArKaos – and a lot of the live visual world – is headed. Forget the phrase “projection mapping,” and think “video mapping” and “pixel mapping.” Yes, projectors will still be a big part of live visuals. But they’ll be just one outlet for visual performance, alongside increasingly-sophisticated LED lighting. And LED lighting is increasingly looking like a major choice in installations.
Let me put that in less technical terms: more bright shiny, shiny from the LEDs.
So, LED is amazing technology for visualization. But it can also be amazingly hard to set up. The race now becomes about how to make that technology easier to access. ArKaos’ play is doing just that with Kling-Net. (Kahplah! Sorry, I’ll stop that now.)
It’s not rocket science to do cool stuff like this with pricey media servers sold for expensive applications. But what about the independent visual artists, the experimental creators pushing the envelope? The good news is, ArKaos is bringing the same media server tech back to GrandVJ, an app that’s far more affordable.
Marco Hinic is engine architect and CEO of ArKaos and creator of Kling-Net. (I love that, in this business, the engineers typically run the show.) Marco tells CDM about what their goals are for the tech:

Kling-Net has been designed to create plug and play LED devices and we are converting more and more manufacturers to work with us. There is nothing else like that on the market and we hope it will enable a new level of integration for many users.
The good news is that we will also support Kling-Net in GrandVJ. Indeed this why we are late with releasing GrandVJ, while working on the video mapper in MediaMaster we added the functionality where a layer can be sent to a mapping surface and / or to Kling-Net – ArtNet. To support that in GrandVJ we need to rework it’s core engine and that’s what we are doing now… We are now looking forward to present that at NAMM with ADJ. Ed.: NAMM is the music trade show in California held in January. Mark your calendars. -PK

The other side of the equation, apart from ArKaos’ software, is the lighting fixtures. Recently, ArKaos announced Chauvet is bringing Kling-Net support to their lighting, which you can see in the video and image below.

Chauvet’s EPIX strip product, as seen in a permanent club installation at Ft. Lauderdale, Florida’s club Off the Hookah.

http://www.chauvetlighting.com/
Kling-Net is a complex technology, so I’ll do two things. First, I’ll direct you to ArKaos’ site that explains how this works:

Kling-Net @ ArKaos
Second, I ask you to tell us what your experience is with these kinds of applications, and what you’d like to know. We’re fortunate enough to get to talk directly to Marco about the technology he engineered, so, seriously, ask anything. I look forward to your questions.
http://arkaos.net/

Nature-Graphique gets triangle fever

Nature-Graphique gets triangle fever:re-blog from Madmapper

The collective cook up an immersive, triangle filled, mapping extravaganza for Scopitone Festival 2012 in Nantes, France. Extra interesting are the brief screenshots of the planning phases. I also spy an interesting layout of what appears to be a Lemur for iPad layout that possesses a highly ergonomic, function oriented layout. In a brief communication with Orl, he notes that the iPad was used to control the multiple computers that were part of setup:
- 2 Mac Pros

- 4 Matrox TripleHead2go

- 12 projectors
Oddly enough, my first impression of this video was that the lighting setup somewhat complimented the structures, given that for the main stage the lamps were considerately positioned at each of the line segments of the triangles. However Orl states that they had little control over and that there was too much light.
Unfortunately this is still a very common problem. I have seen productions that could have been immensely improved by a tasteful and relatively simple balancing and placement of lighting. It always appears to me that lighting is somehow arranged in a sort of battle formation that disregards any kind of overall stage composition. This type of scenario usually emerges when the producers of the event are primarily concerned with getting the job done without much of a fuss.
While the technology at our disposal is getting better, with more integration between video and lighting, such as the upcoming release of MadMapper with its MadLight feature, we will likely always have to set our own standards and convince others in order to achieve our visions.

Pedestrians, Re-Sequenced: Walking Becomes Audiovisual Performance in “LAYERS”

Pedestrians, Re-Sequenced: Walking Becomes Audiovisual Performance in “LAYERS”:reblog from Create Digital Motion





LAYERS (teaser) / Audiovisual performance from NOhista on Vimeo.
In Madeleine L’Engle’s seminal science fiction novel A Wrinkle in Time, the characters on Camazotz walk in time to a pervasive beat produced by a telepathic brain known as IT. In “LAYERS,” synchronistic pedestrians are perhaps not so sinister. But in a more playful experiment, those figures become part of an audiovisual composition, a kind of beat-sequenced set of sampled walking people moving through volumes of color. The result is that an otherwise ordinary, mundane feature of the landscape becomes aesthetic.
Pedestrians, in other words, need not be pedestrian.
More information:

Layers is an audio/visual performance about perception and memory, with the goal of creating a choreography for a digital crowd. Using audio-video fragments of anonymous pedestrians, Nohista confronts the public with his personal experience of the urban crowd.

Here, space and time are dissolved through tables and reassembled throughout a partition where the audio and visual material becomes an instrument, propelling the viewer into an evanescent universe.

Audio-video by Nohista / Shot and produced in Montreal / 2012

for best video quality: nohista.org/?portfolio=layers-2

Exhibitions//

Sight and Sound 2012 / Eastern Bloc / Montreal

Byetone / Nohista / Centre Phi / Montreal

Thanks to Bruno/”nohista” for sending your work our way!
http://nohista.org
Live performance version:



LAYERS @ Sight and Sound 2012 from NOhista on Vimeo.

Amon Tobin ISAM 2.0 – Leviathan

Amon Tobin ISAM 2.0 – Leviathan:Posted on Motionographer



Chicago-based studio Leviathan crafts a creative projection-mapped piece to provide an immersive stage experience for Amon Tobin’s ISAM 2.0 tour.  Check out the making of video here.

Amon Tobin : ISAM case study from Leviathan on Vimeo.

In Black Droplets, the Monochrome LCD Transformed Into Medium

In Black Droplets, the Monochrome LCD Transformed Into Medium:reblog from Create Digital Motion


If previous generations worked in paint, now we can work in monochrome LCDs. That’s the message of a beautiful work entitled IRIS, making use of lowly LCD displays to produce a mirror made of dots. The description:

IRIS is a unique media canvas with matrix of conventional information display technology – a monochrome LCD. Through the phased opening and closing of circular-segmented black Liquid Crystal, IRIS can create various patterns and control the amount (size) of passing lights. IRIS is an interactive medium for visual simplicity which uses the passage of ambient light, not emission of light itself.

Interactive mirrors are a trope in themselves, but I think this piece nicely recalls Daniel Rozin’s “Wooden Mirror,” which lives in the lobby at NYU’s ITP program, a hub in New York of interactive design work. There’s an excellent video document of that piece:

More specs:

Expandable Matrix of Transmissive Monochrome LCD (90x90mm), Custom designed Arduino compatible controller board, DMX512, SPI, Kinect /
It is a selected and supported work of Da Vinci Idea Program(2012) by Seoul Art Space_Geumcheon, KOREA

Another lovely work from HYBE adds interactivity to Dan Flavin’s elegant, minimalist work with lighting tubes:

Full Color LED on custom-designed controller board with Integrated IR Sensor, Acrylic, Stainless Frame. 15(W)x235(H)x38(D)cm /
HYBE’s Light Tree: Interactive Dan Flavin re-illuminates the minimalist fluorescent light tubes of Dan Flavin(1933-1996) from the 1960s, through digital technology. Experimenting with light and its effect, Flavin explored artistic meaning in relationships between light, situation, and environment. The readymade fluorescent light fixtures he used created space divided and adjusted by light and composition, offering a newly structured space with light. HYBE’s work expands the logic of Flavin by reinforcing the physical property of light through interactive media. It presents an escape from traditional lighting, as light and color changes when touched by viewers. Lighting here is divided into front and back, and colors are programmed to maintain complementary colors. The front lighting constantly interacts with colors on a back wall through visual contrast and mixture. A random change and diffusion of light with the involvement of viewers provokes tension extending and segmenting space, turning space into a forum for emotional perceptual experience.

Beyonce at the UN: Behind the Scenes of Epic Projection in the General Assembly Hall [Gallery]

Beyonce at the UN: Behind the Scenes of Epic Projection in the General Assembly Hall [Gallery]:

The new world of projection is big – really big. Planet big. It’s not a dinky projector pointing at a ragged, wrinkled piece of cloth. It’s something that can stand up to one of the world’s great divas.
When you’ve got Beyoncé, and you’ve got the General Assembly Hall of the United Nations in New York City, you’re on a whole new level. Lucas Werthein of SuperUber is kind enough to share with Create Digital Motion the effort that made this all possible. And, we have a photo gallery revealing how all of this came together.

First, he rattles off some of the impressive specs:

Projection

• We used 10 20K HLM Barco projectors
• Mapping was done using Pandora’s widget designer and 5 Pandora’s Box Dual servers
• The final video has a 8856 x 1664 resolution
• This final video was split into 10 slices of 1080 x 1664 pixels, since each projector was turned on its side and we projected the images vertically in order for them to cover the whole structure. We fed 2 slices into each system and did the warping and edge blending inside Pandora

Screen

• The screen is over 12,000 square feet
• It is the largest indoor temporary screen that is a tilted compound curve. From an engineering standpoint, it is extremely complex.
• It took a team of 45 people to sew the screen.
• It weighs 1000 pounds. The whole structure, which was hanging off the the UN ceiling weighed 6000 pounds
  
• In order to create the proper tension for the screen to hold its shape we had to weld permanent rigging points into the dome of the general assembly.

This is projection mapping, though onto a fairly simple surface. What makes the mapping so effective is the way in which it can fill the space, making those pictures immersive on a grand architectural scale. It makes the image a real volume in which the performance can take place.
The content itself might draw some criticism. The event celebrates the World Health Organization’s World Humanitarian Day, humanitarian efforts and social causes. The imagery, featuring groups like the Red Cross, tends to more traditional aid – this is people in corners of the world being helped by someone else’s hand, rather than helping themselves. But that’s what powerful projection can do: it can make imagery big enough that it invites big thinking — and debate. Even amidst the spectacle here, that kind of powerful immersion can lead people to engage with what images mean, enlightened in a brilliant glare rather than lost in dimmed obscurity. (And, for the record, with an interactive component, the WHO in this case also invited direct commentary on what social action can mean.)
In the end, you see a performance in which neither Beyoncé nor the imagery upstages the other – it’s two powerful performances, not just one.
SuperUber offers more description, which also puts those animations and images in better context.

SuperUber was invited to direct the technology, screen, and stage design for Beyoncé’s single “I Was Here”. The filming took place on Friday, August 10th, during a live performance for special guests in the General Assembly Hall of the United Nations in New York.
The music video is part of the global World Humanitarian Day campaign, which honors humanitarian efforts worldwide and encourages people to engage in social causes. The worldwide release took place on Sunday, August 19th, and 1 billion messages were shared through social media (whd-iwashere.org).

SuperUber’s role included the integration between animations and technology, the structure design and projection mapping that took over the United Nations General Assembly Hall.
It is the largest indoor compound curved screen ever created – a complex and sophisticated project. It was custom-designed to mold to the inside of the General Assembly Hall. The screen spanned 224 ft X 46 ft (68m X 15m) and surrounded the audience with a 240 degree immersive projection. Ten synchronized and mapped projections covered the screen with 200,000 lumens, creating one continuous giant image.
“It’s an ambitious project that has completely transformed an iconic location – seen as immutable and unchanging, with its goldplated panel and grand volume. By adding a virtual layer to it, we could digitally rebuild it, playing with the architectural elements, and therefore changing the notion of something static. The technology made the integration between animation and architecture. We used projectors to “paint with light” the UN General Assembly’s Hall – a unique opportunity to transform such an emblematic place,” said Russ Rive, SuperUber’s director.

SuperUber was invited by Kenzo Digital, director of numerous acclaimed productions, amongst them Beyoncé’s “Run The World (Girls)” performance at the Billboard Music Awards in 2011. The “I Was Here” performance was directed by Kenzo Digital, in association with Droga5, Ridley Scott Associates (RSA), SuperUber, and Dirt Empire.

SuperUber is an agency, tech lab, and architectural studio working across media and interactive projects, with offices in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and New York
http://superuber.com

Philips Thinks We Want a Giant Wave of LED Panels, Controlled By iPad – And They’re Correct

Philips Thinks We Want a Giant Wave of LED Panels, Controlled By iPad – And They’re Correct:

LivingSculpture 3D module system from WHITEvoid on Vimeo.
Visualism has gone far beyond just projection. Lighting continues to dazzle, blurring the lines between the image, object, pixel, and display, as LED panels produce new three-dimensional forms and animation.
In a spectacular project for lighting giant Philips, Berlin-headquarted White Void, the interactive shop led by Christopher M. Bauder, produces a giant wave of screens, all controlled via iPad. (Bauder you might recall from a collaboration with Robert Henke, featured on Create Digital Music in 2009 in view and interview, in stunning, fanciful arrays of mechanized balloons and accompanying electronic score.)
Details:

The “LivingSculpture 3D module system” is the latest addition to the Philips “LivingSculpture” product family. WHITEvoid designed a modular plug and play OLED system that allows for infinite variations in layout and arrangement of a ceiling or wall lighting installation. The highly flexible system consists of an online configurator to create and order the individual arrangement, a plug and play modular hardware system and an iPad controlled light animation application.

It’s sumptuous, immersive, sculptural eye candy. (I’m filing this in my Neo-Baroque file.)
at whitevoid.com
And yes, Philips, I’d like one for my evil lair once I come up with some truly unethical way of building one. In the meantime: LED’s future is bright for visual artists, no question.

Touching Beams of Light: An Otherworldly Laser Interaction Prototype

NOW THIS IS SOMETHING NEW! (re-blog from Create Digital Motion)



Touching Beams of Light: An Otherworldly Laser Interaction Prototype:
Laser interaction prototype from jayson on Vimeo.
Interaction design isn’t just input. Output can transform a simple demo into something that seems to bend reality.
Melbourne-based artist Jayson Haebich sends over a laser interaction prototype he’s creating. The results seem like science fiction, as though he’s opening jump gates with his fingers.
It’s almost exclusively for aesthetic effect, but that sense of light, sound, and space coming together and then being gently pulled apart is more than enough. Technical details:

The software used to control the laser was created using OpenFrameworks and C++ by Jayson Haebich and uses an Xbox kinect to do 3d tracking. The software creates the lasers beams by sending vectors to the laser via a DAC. The lasers position is then calibrated to the 3-Dimensional field of data viewed from the kinect, which is used to detect when intersections between users and the laser beams occur. These interactions then trigger effects such as colour changes or causing the beams to move which gives users the feeling of being able to touch the laser beams.

Jason, when you get further with this, you can bet we’ll want to see it.
http://jaysonh.com/laser.html

Robotic Mapping Pulls a Model Building, Tron-Like, Into the Virtual

re-blog from Create Digital Motion



Robotic Mapping Pulls a Model Building, Tron-Like, Into the Virtual:
MPS – Building Presentation from White Kanga on Vimeo.
A model building rotates, light spilling over it. A virtualized sun creates shadows and accelerated days. And then, halfway through, the building still gliding in circles, it’s as though you can see through the building to wireframes beneath.
The latest illusions from the White Kanga crew aren’t simply mapping as a novel way of making projection look three-dimensional. They appear to alter the reality around the object itself, playing with our perception’s ability to see animation as something fluid and real.
Or, to put it another way: moving the subject, not just the projection, has a remarkable amount of potential for mapping illusory effect. See, previously:

Projection Mapping, with Robotics, Goes Further to Augmenting Reality: MPS Demo [TouchDesigner]

Mapping, in Motion: Projection Meets Stepper Motor for Rotating Fun [vvvv+Arduino]
Toolset: TouchDesigner, custom software, control, and robotics.
Derivative, makers of TouchDesigner, interviewed this crew:

White Kanga, a talented crew from Poland have expertly been building their own custom applications with TouchDesigner to produce something remarkably new, integrating mapping, robotics and extended reality. A revealing interview with the team details their experience working with TouchDesigner from a seasoned VFX background (Houdini pros) and the making of the Modeling Projection System (MPS) project.

Love the headline: What WHITE KANGA is building with TOUCHDESIGNER to alter our sense of REALITY

Pop-Up Video: Tesla, Synesthetic Hallucination, and Augmented Book Science

Pop-Up Video: Tesla, Synesthetic Hallucination, and Augmented Book Science:

Nikola Tesla in Sound and Light from Marco Tempest on Vimeo.


Nikola Tesla in Sound and Light from Marco Tempest on Vimeo.
Digitally-enhanced magician Marco Tempest is back, here with a poignant message about the magic of science – the leaps of faith, and leaps of showmanship, required to turn scientific imagination into reality. Any opportunity to celebrate genius scientist Nikola Tesla, unjustly unsung relative to his extraordinary accomplishments in electricity and thinking, is a good one. Here, too, we find a behind-the-scenes look at how carefully-calibrated projection mapping brings a pop-up book to life. Some of those close-ups in the video at top are unforgiving (it’d work perfectly in a theatrical setting). But the integration of the book, Marco Tempest’s sleight of hand, and digital animation can be spellbinding.
And because Mr. Tempest is of the mind that being more open makes the magic more effective, not less – a bit like science itself – he shares all the how-to details.


Making of "Nikola Tesla in Sound and Light" from Marco Tempest on Vimeo.


Making of “Nikola Tesla in Sound and Light” from Marco Tempest on Vimeo.
Full details, plus the TED version:

Created and Produced by Marco Tempest

Script: David Britland

Art Direction: Kevin Blanc

Motion Design: Alain Renold

Pop-up Design: Peter Dahmen

Music and sound design: Michael Ricar

Custom software development: Enrico Viola

Arduino Tech Wizard: Manuel Rueda Iragorri

Pre-visualization and production mascot: Signe Fleischmann

additional still photography:

Carmen Kam

(Bonus points to anyone who knows to what my headline refers. Or, at least, you’ve established you’re my age.)

Artisan / UVA: Sprint “The Dream”

Artisan / UVA: Sprint “The Dream”:





Do androids dream of electric sheep? Do cell phones dream of interactive on-screen cinema experiences? Artisan (part of UVA) used their in-house content mapping framework, d3, to create a stunning cell phone warning. The making-of that shows off the practical effects they filmed is particularly impressive.
Hat tip to creativeapplications.net.


Team Sprint – Campaign Credits:

Client/Ad or Campaign: Sprint’s “Dream” Cinema PSA for NCM Theaters

Agency: Team Sprint – Leo Burnett & Digitas

Chief Creative Officer: Susan Credle

Creative Directors: Michael Boychuk, Kevin Drew Davis, Mark Moll

EVP, Executive Director of Production: Chris Rossiter

Producer: Bryan Litman, Amanda Riley

Account Team: Vanessa Mackey, Julie Holton and Melissa Wolf

Production Company: Artisan

Director: Artisan and Chris Turner

VFX/SPX: Artisan

Editorial: Trim Edit

Editor: Paul Hardcastle

Director of Photography: James Medcraft

Sound Design: Scanner
Posted on Motionographer

Projection Mapping, with Robotics, Goes Further to Augmenting Reality: MPS Demo [TouchDesigner]

Projection Mapping, with Robotics, Goes Further to Augmenting Reality: MPS Demo [TouchDesigner]:re-blog from CreateDigitalMotion



Okay, great: you can project on facades and surfaces in ways that makes the image tailor-mapped to the surface. What else can you do?
Rafal Bielski and a small team from Poland provide a glimpse of a more awesome, more futuristic future. Here, projection mapping isn’t content with a still, static surface, like a building. The surface and the projection can both move, aided by robotic servos. As that image tracks the object, the combined project comes further to the dream of transforming the physical reality around us with digital visuals.
How cool is this? Well, for starters, that video above is not something done in post. It’s not a special effect. It’s live, real-time projection you’re watching – really. (No one hiding behind the curtain, either.)
Rafal explains that the result is “a combination of interactive real-time 3D projection, robotics and augmented reality.”:

MPS is the realization of an idea of pushing projection mapping one step forward, making it even more spectacular and involving. In short, we have synchronized rotation of stepped motor engine with “geometric” projection with respect to the position of the viewer. This is the moment where we get the spectator to “believe” that this is a metallic, weird box rotating in a front of the window of the skyscraper. It was shocking to me when I made a very first panel to show our friends that Vimeo flick. Most of them — like 80% — thought it was all post-production, a 3d animation (the industry three of us have come from) and Arek Rekita is just keyed-in there. So imagine the

sensation when you are actually standing in front of it. Its physical form there is real, and I think you can sense those qualities even through the computer’s screen.
The ability to visually influence human beings is weakening. We are getting more and more resistant to that form of communication. (When was the last time you heard heard that a movie had “good CG FC, really, go see it”?) In the film industry, I hope we are getting back to the era of a good script over spectacular effects, but in advertising, there is a whole new world coming in. I could rant about it for hours, so lets get back to MPS. The upper projection surface part is a 50 kg vinyl polymer structure, reaching 3.5 m in height. The base is a custom-made device from certified components, mainly stepper motor connected and controlled via Arduino.
The PC has twin GeForce cards driving three projectors – Benq W1100 and wide-lens Mitsubishi 230u-st. That worked well, but the system also worked with Christie Roadster monsters not in this video. Of course, we went for Derivative TouchDesigner as our interactive visual programming environment. It was a spectacular

learning process, adapting third-party libraries, synchronizing devices, and writing tools to quicken calibration processes. Yeah, we developed our own calibration software: it’s a semi-automatic little tool with live quality. We are going to introduce it on our Facebook profile soon. Stay tuned.

More is coming, too. Rafal tells CDM, “in the near future, we will presents our in-house software for semiautomatic projector/3d calibration and others.” Yes. We’ll look forward to that.
Consider yourself teased.

MPS project.

Realtime projection+servo+augmented reality.

Rafal Bielski : Programming, CG

Arek Rekita: Programming, Devices

Rafal Osmolski: Support

White Kanga is based in Warsaw.

In Translucent Glass Grids, Nature’s Patterns, Revealed

In Translucent Glass Grids, Nature’s Patterns, Revealed:re-blog from CreateDigitalMotion



Up close, nature’s patterns represent nothing so much as elegant geometry, or even, perhaps, pixels. Rendered as an translucent array, organic patterns become a dance of digital pixels in a work in North Carolina. The creators describe it nicely, so it’s best to reflect on their description – and recall that nature can be an endless source of inspiration.
There’s an extra revelation here, too: low-power displays could be the future. And that’s excellent news for nature.

Patterned by Nature was commissioned by the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences for the newly-built Nature Research Center in Raleigh, North Carolina. The exhibit celebrates our abstraction of nature’s infinite complexity into patterns through the scientific process, and through our perceptions. It brings to light the similarity of patterns in our universe, across all scales of space and time.

10 feet wide and 90 feet in length, this sculptural ribbon winds through the five story atrium of the museum and is made of 3600 tiles of LCD glass. It runs on roughly 75 watts, less power than a laptop computer. Animations are created by independently varying the transparency of each piece of glass.

The content cycles through twenty programs, ranging from clouds to rain drops to colonies of bacteria to flocking birds to geese to cuttlefish skin to pulsating black holes. The animations were created through a combination of algorithmic software modeling of natural phenomena and compositing of actual footage.

An eight channel soundtrack accompanies the animations on the ribbon, giving visitors clues to the identity of the pixelated movements. In addition, two screens show high resolution imagery and text revealing the content on the ribbon at any moment.

Patterned by Nature was created by

Plebian Design – plebiandesign.com

Hypersonic Design & Engineering – hypersoniced.com

and

Sosolimited – sosolimited.com