Wednesday, June 20, 2012

A video look... at an immersive experience


So much of my time as been spent designing for the 9 projector environment.  The animation is only part of what is projected on the screen and scrims.  We found a way to bring the animation into the constructed video world.  This allows so many more textures than before... I wish I had been able to do this a few years back when creating for the Milwaukee Ballet.  The environment becomes rich in colors and textures when you can mix video and animation.  

The clip above is an example of animation (without anyone interacting with it...) being modified to show a color corrected clip of leaves.  It's very hard to see what is going on here without a dancer in the middle of the space.  You are looking at a scrim in front, projections on the floor and projections on the back wall... it's meant surrounds the dancers.  At that particular moment we have a bit of fake smoke in the 3 wall/scrim space and this creates a feel of the dancers appearing out of the clouds.  No video will be able to give a proper rendition of what this feels like in person.  It's a truly immersive experience. 


While I started working with Max/MSP Jitter years ago I eventually appreciated the simplicity of Isadora when dealing with dance environments.  We are receiving 4 live cameras (one is interchangeable with the animation computer) and project to 3 pairs of projectors, plus 3 single projectors.  What you are seeing above is our test patch before we start the show.  it's pretty easy to build once you know what things are called :)

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