Geneva - Audio-Visual and Mapping Festival 2011

I have recently returned from the Audio Visual and Projection Mapping festival held at Geneva, Switzerland with my mate Simon (3rd year animation student at Falmouth.) This was a great experience and really helped me to put a face to this niche industry. Not only was it a good chance to have a merry one but it was also very insightful, interesting and useful to meet other professionals in the field of Audio Visual production.

The festival itself was held over 10 days, we got a ticket just for the last weekend (Friday and Saturday.) It was at 5 different locations - A cinema and adjoining night club (Cinema Spoutnik and Zoo/Usine), a warehouse (Le Fonderie - near where they kept all the buses,)an art gallery (BAC) and a couple of other places I didn't get time to go to. I went a bit OTT here and made a lovely little diagram mapping the locations of the festival:

Le Fonderie


Here, they accommodated the MadMapper workshop. Unfortuantly, Simon and I were a bit late to join in for this (plus neither of us had the required Macbooks needed to join in.) MadMapper is a new software that allows you to project onto any given surface - its pretty cool stuff. We entered what looked like an abandoned warehouse to find a bunch of guys and a few girls on laptops testing it out. The architecture inside was ideal as there were lots of different surfaces, walls and pipes to project onto and sure enough there were many projectors in action. We wondered around a bit - mingling with the people who were trying it out before heading off to the cinema Spoutnik to catch the VJ competion. We came back again later to see it in action. Here are a few pictures I took:

VJ competition

A key event for me was the VJ contest held at Cinema Spoutnik over 2 days with around 20 participants. It was great to witness this art form being performed and exploited to its full potential by other like minded practioners. Below are some videos showing examples of work produced by the 2 finalists.

VJ Kobored:



VJ Suave - this video is from the first round of the Mapping festival:




VJ Kobored was the winner and won a belt and quite a lot of other stuff! (see below)

It was great to sit back and watch this with so many like minded people that treated VJing as a recognised Art Form. VJ suave has a very cool hand drawn and artistic animation style with some great characters. VJ Kobored had a range of 3d, live action and 2d styles. VJ Electroiman incorporated some performance art in his work using people who were made up and in costume. VJ Fader used an iPad as his main input - literally tweeking the visuals by the touch of his fingers (practically like playing an instrument.) It was an audio visual feast experienced in the comfort of a cosy cinema!

Another highlight for me was the BAC. The gallery was fully kitted out with interactive and visual projection sculptures. On top of this we attended a conference there.


The Conference

One of the speakers talked to us about a program he had worked on called VVVV. This software serves as a node based compositing platform between coding and rendered animation. Its not something I'm particularly interested in but those of you who are into coding would find it very interesting.

United Visual Artists talked to us about their work and the creation of their latest software 'd3' which ties in texture mapping/modelling/and projection mapping into one program. There was a lot of interest in this. It will be around a year or so before we see any sign of its release. UVA are known for supporting bands like Massive Attack with visual installations. They also talked about their projection work on a Bentley sports car and some permanent visual sculptures they had done.

Another one of the speakers was Shantell Martin. Shantell works as an Artist, VJ and Illustrator. She likes to draw directly onto people in real time using a Wacom tablet and Sketchbook Pro. The theme of her work is to directly interact with people, performing her work at exhibitions and clubs. I found her to be quite a free spirit and very inspiring.


The Art Exhibition

There was some fantastic work exhibited that made you go 'ouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!' Here are some of the pieces:

Enigmatica III by Kit Webster 


Further experimentation into new forms of synesthetic sculpture.

Continued from ENIGMATICA vimeo.com/9842123

www.kitwebster.com.au

Of course to see it in real life is something else as it utilises the dimension of physical depth. It is quite a sensory overload!

Cityscape 2095 by Legoman, Mandril & Thomas Vaquie

This city was awesome. It was a composited array of bits and pieces of various cities projected onto from behind. You could see it was timelapsed as it went through day and night. As you can see - someone had worked over it using art materials giving it more edge..

This tracking installation attached a little creature silohuette that floated around your silohuette as you walked across - it made me giggle :-) Apologies for not knowing who created it..

There were other installations but the three above were my favourite..


Zoo/Usine Audio Visual clubbing

This was a nice extra of the whole event for me. I have to say that the music was not totally up my street - (mainly electronic and techno) but it was fun having a bit of a boogie. The visuals were generally fairly basic - patterns, a mouth jumping around, written statements and I have to say that they didn't do much for me. I found the VJ competiton a lot more interesting in terms of visual content. Still it was pretty fun and of course there were drinks : D Highlights include seeing 'Da Krew' - the french equivalent of The Beastie Boys!

Other stuff

Phew! This is quite an epic blog post! I think it has to be to reflect the epic-ness of the trip! I forgot to mention on our first day we accidently walked into France! oops! Its ok though we made it back.

Geneva is a pretty nice city, with smooth transport (trams) that run on time, a large and impressive lake and on the horizon surrounding the city are mountains. It has quite a cosmopolitan population with lots of rich banker types. Generally its a very affluent place epitomised by its 140 metre high water jet at Lake Geneva. Having said that our hostel was round the corner from the red light district so we also saw the sin city gritty edge to it.

We more or less lived out of Lid'Ls in terms of food and luckily for us City Hostel in Geneva had a little kitchen we could use. We also got free transport for the duration of our stay chucked in with our accommodation fees so a win-win situation there. We met some good people in the hostel and at the festival. One last random thing - we saw a Saturday night roller disco by the side of Lake Geneva! How cool is that?!

Some final photographs of our trip:

The journey there was a golden opportunity to shoot some cloudscapes.

Hello Geneva !

These faces seemed quietly confident...

The party was in full swing at Usine

Even the toilet was a visual sensation!

Walking back from the club..

Its a clock made out of flowers! Amazing!

This made us giggle..

Is that a regular curb or...

A little miniature curb planet!

Nothing says success like a 140 metre water jet.

Simon and myself on our last day. I had just eaten an amazing sandwich.

Yep. My camera does panoramas!

Some business cards from the various VJs and jewelry merchants we came across.

Our 4 day trip comes to an end. This airport scene looks relaxed but a few moments later we were literally running to catch our flight. (I had misread the times on our checking in sheets and assumed the plane leaving time was actually the gate closing time - luckily my name was announced on the intercom and we made it!)

So far this trip has got to be the highlight of my year. It was fantastic and I'd recommend it to anyone with an inkling to the more alternative/performance/audio visual/motion graphics/fine arty/experimental/projection mapping side of Animation.

Animation Technologies Assignment - Virtual Reality

This term we have looked into Animation Technology. We were assigned to research into the history, present and future of a technology that is relevant to Animation. After browsing across various areas I decided to focus in on Virtual Reality. In particular, focusing on an experiment which involves virtual reality modelling. You can see my essay on this if you scroll down to the bottom of this post.

We also had to do a 5-10 minute presentation on our topic. For this I have posted up the slides that I showed with corresponding text that represents what I spoke about with each slide. Look at this to get a quicker impression and understanding of my topic.

Presentation:

I looked at Virtual Reality for my project. First, a little bit of history:

Morton Heligs 'Sensorama' was a mechanical device that included a stereoscopic display, fans, odour emitters, stereo speakers and a moving chair. It embraced all senses.

The Philco Corporation developed Headsight. This was a headset connected to a camera - when the users head moved, so did the camera. It allowed Helicopter pilots to fly at night using headsets that were connected (via magnetic tracking) to infrared cameras positioned below the helicopter.

Ivan Sutherland was the first to connect the Headsight to a computer and established some principles of Virtual Reality which are still in use today: The Virtual Reality comes across as a real environment. It is generated by a computer in real time. It allows users to manipulate virtual objects.

Antonio Medina was a NASA scientist who found a way of controlling Mars Rovers and experiencing Mars from Earth.

So, what kind of environment is required for Virtual Reality to work?
Here is an example:

This is a 4-sided stereoscopic head-tracked immersive display. It uses the same technology as 3D films. Oppositely polarised light is projected in at 4 angles allowing the virtual world to be fed in via computer and interpreted by the user in 3D space.

The main experiment I looked at used this same structure:

Do check out the video link! It is quite remarkable.

Effectively its like being inside Maya. It incorporates a bi-manual interface and allows the user to interact with virtual objects using 2 hands. The head and less dominant hand is tracked using ultrasonic technology. Input comes from both hands (one of which controlling a wand - the equivalent of a mouse.)

There are 3 different modes. Immersive, Table and Mixed. Immersive is 1 : 1 allowing the user to get up close and inspect their work. Table is table sized (!) and allows for quicker and easier editing. Mixed (like the above picture) is a combination.

The software was developed using C++ and Open GL. It is based on an earlier program by Cabral et al. This program allows the user to put together models using model pieces. The models update in real time as the user manipulates them.

Here's another experiment I have looked at. This one involves tactile feedback and allows the user to feel the holograms. So here, the user can feel virtual raindrops splashing on their hands. Again, it is worth checking out the video found at the link above.

So what are the future applications? Well...

We would be more like virtual builders with a greater degree of natural interactivity and control. One possible application demonstrated in my picture above is in Scene Planning and Pre - Visualisation. You would be able to work collaboratively around a 3D scene. You would physically be able to move the virtual cameras, lights and characters. You would be able to check what the virtual cameras are viewing in the 2D viewports and adjust the composition to suit your needs.

Other areas of future application are in modelling and animation. With modelling the standard could be what is achieved with Maya today. With tactile feedback you may be able to literally feel the models, so effectively it could be like working with clay. Painting and Texture applications could also be created. In animation, actors would be motion captured much like they are now, only they would be able to act within a virtual environment. This may may lead to more convincing acting.

To sum up my presentation:

On an ethical note: If Virtual Reality becomes more prominent as a means of entertainment and media we should be careful not to get addicted to such entertainment and keep a sense of our physical real world identities and realities.

On a positive note: A more immersive and interactive virtual process would heighten our physical and mental engagement and reduce RSI. A greater natural interface between the user and the software would enhance our enjoyment of the work involved.

Essay:

Animation Technologies Assignment