relief projection

augmentedsculpture by pablo valbuena, originally uploaded by hc gilje.

I found the title of this post in one of Michael Naimarks essays, I guess it also could have been called augmented reality, projection of a virtual object onto a physical object, projecting a virtual layer ontop of a physical geometry, masking of projections, etc.

I have been researching different ways of projecting on other things than flat surfaces: projections that project on objects, follow the shape of the room, and projections of virtual 3D shapes onto physical 3D shapes.

In my own work I have used projections as advanced light sources, masking as a way to fit flat projections on objects and surfaces, but also to create the illusion of multiple screens from a single source. Some examples here.

My goal has been to create tools which make it easy to start working with a physical space immediately, being able to make changes in realtime. I have mainly done this by using multiple opengl videoplane layers in max/msp jitter, with one of the layers having a drawing mode so you are able to draw the shape of a particular object after you have placed a opengl layer over it. I made a crude 3 layer tool for the workshop I did at KHIO this summer to enable the participants to immediately start relating to the physical space.
The master of multiple opengl videoplanes in Norway is Piotr Pajchel in his work with Verdensteatret.

I have done some experiments with projecting a 3D shape onto physical objects, but still have a long way to go in terms of having a simple setup for this.
Obviously I have been looking at what other people have been doing, but none of systems I have found seems to be available to the public, and few of them seem to have been used beyond the developing-period of the system, which might be a sign of them not being as flexible as wanted, and maybe also quite timeconsuming to prepare.

Most systems uses a method to track the shape/space they want to project onto in combination with custommade software, to be able to map the projected image correctly onto the physical object, which is related to the lens specifications of the projector, the placement of the projector in relation to the objects to be projected on, etc.

The LightTwist system developed at the University of Montreal (not much seems to have happened after 2004) use “a panoramic (catadioptric) camera to get correspondances between each projector pixel with the camera pixel. This camera represents the viewpoint of our futur observers. Then, from what the observer should see, we can build the projector images from their respective mapping.”

The videobjects from Whitevoid design in Germany is a software for realtime distortion of video to fit physical objects, but using predistorted video, and you calibrate it either with a helpgrid or by importing a model of the realworld setup. So you would need to first create the 3D shapes to project onto, and then decide how the video will map onto the 3D objects, and finally doing the calibration to match up the virtual objects with the physical ones.

I think the most spectacular callibration solution so far is the “automatic projector calibration with embedded light sensors” (pdf), a collaboration between people from Carnegie-Mellon, Mitsubishi Electric Research Lab and Stanford. They use fiberoptics and light sensors built into the objects/surfaces to be projected on, and by projecting a series of grey coded binary patterns, a custom-made software is able to adjust the image in less than a second to perfectly fit the projectionsurface, with a much higher resolution than a camerabased solution. Take a look at the impressive video:

The pdf and video seems to be from 2004, but I found some more information here. They are hoping to make the system fast enough for live tracking of moving objects, and also to make the calibration pattern invisible using infrared light.

If you have a big budget you could always invite Circus of Now to do the video for you (”We build skyscrapers of light”).

At Ars Electronica this year I had the pleasure to see Palbo Valbuena´s Augmented Sculpture (image at top of this post) which consists of a physical structure in the corner of the room, with the exact same virtual shape projected onto it using one projector. By then animating the color and lighting of this virtual shape, some very interesting light/shadowplays happen. Valbuena collaborates with some game developers in Spain who constructed the virtual model and animation in a standard 3D software.
This work shows the potential in augmented reality using videoprojection, and I hope to see more of his work soon (He has a big outdoor installation in Madrid at the moment, hopefully there will be some documentation soon.)

update feb 5th 2008: Valbuena has updated his website with documentation of several projects: different versions of the augmented sculpture and the public square installation in Madrid.

 

Verdensteatret installations

Louder_k11, originally uploaded by hc gilje.

This weekend I got the chance to see the two installations “Fortellerorkesteret” and “Louder” by Verdensteatret at Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo. Both come out of two theater performances by Verdensteatret. I had the opportunity to be a little bit involved in the production of Fortellerorkesteret so it was nice to see it in this huge beautiful space.

The installations are a mix of sculpture,sound,video,kinetic objects,light and shadows, and are inspiring examples of compositions in space. Fortellerorkesteret has a more theater structure, resemblant of old mechanical puppet theater, while Louder is more of a spatial experience dominated by the huge mechanical spider and the numerous speakers.

more images of louder and fortellerorkesteret

directional sound

May I Have Your attention, Please, originally uploaded by Mar.co.

I am doing a series of projects called soundpockets for urban interface oslo, which in different ways tries to create pockets of sound in public space. Some of the versions involve the fm sender- mp3 setup mentioned in the previous post, another one involves a directional speaker mounted on a pan/tilt unit, and this has been my second headache this summer, finding a controllable pan/tilt unit which is reasonably fast, which can handle a load of a few kilos and which is not ridiculously expensive.

Fortunately I have had good help from Soundscape studios. The first ideas was to use a existing movinghead light and refit it with the speaker, but it turned out that the motors wouldnt be able to handle the load. Pan tilt units are usually made for a specific purpose, either light or video, and the few ones which are available for general purpose use and which are controllable are very expensive.
The one we have ended up with is quite expensive, but is controlled using serial protocol, is made for outdoor use, and is powerful enough to handle video projectors (for later projects). It is also very fast, up to 300 degrees per second pan, and 60 degrees per second tilt. Hopefully it arrives next week.

The most ambitious plan is to control it using an arduino microcontroller, which will also control a serial-controllable mp3 player, the daisy, so I should be able to place sounds quite accurately in a space, and also create movements with sounds.
If time runs short I will use a macmini with max controlling the sound and pan-tilt unit over the serial port.

I have been testing two different models of directional speakers which uses ultrasound as the carrier signal, I will probably have to go for the smaller one, although I am a bit worried it will disappear in the ambient sound. It is also challenging to find the sounds which works best, and also how to deal with the sounds both coming directly from the narrow beam of the speaker but also the reflections on surfaces in the space.

The inspiration for this projects comes from when I studied in Trondheim in the 90ies, and I heard some stories about how a directional speaker had been used to cause a certain distress on a bridge over the local river: A person walking alone across the bridge suddenly hearing whispering voices. An out of tune clarinet projected into a marching band playing on the 17th of may (Norway´s national holiday).
If these stories are true or not, doesn´t really matter, it is the idea of having a private experience in a public space which intrigued me.

Results of video for stage workshop

khio workshop 09, originally uploaded by hc gilje.

I taught a one week workshop for the director-,choreography-, and scenography students at the National Academy of the Arts in Oslo last week.
My approach was to develop tools in the form of small software applications which made it very easy for the students to immediately start exploring ways of using video in a space.
We also tested out many different projection surfaces, privalite, dmx-controlled shutters, physical masks.

You can see a slideshow of some of the results here.

And even better, you can check out two of the applications I made (built using maxmsp and jitter), for both osX and windows. One is a simple capture program for recording either live stream, animation or recorded footage already on the camera, to your harddrive.
The other is a tool for positioning and scaling 3 planes of video, creating presets of the scenes you create and then make transitions between the scenes.

Morphovision

 

Ars2006 030 Toshio Iwai - Morphovision, originally uploaded by watz.

This project has been mentioned enough places already I guess, but it fits too well to my research theme for me to leave it out: Morphovision by Toshio Iwai, shown at Siggraph and Ars Electronica last year. It is almost disturbing how frequency and patterns of light combined with motion make a solid model house morph into very liquid shapes.
“Morphovision is a unique display system that interactively transforms and animates a 3D solid object before our eyes. In this system, a model house is rotated at high speed, and is illuminated with special lighting from a digital projector. This enables the model to be distorted into various shapes.” More info here.

Video from Ars Electronica:

I was reminded of Morphovision when reading about a low-tech project posted on the serendipity blog, the time fountain, molding time and form with strobelight.

The queen is the supreme power

The queen is the supreme power 2, originally uploaded by hc gilje.

(Slideshow from the rehearsals here)

My latest collaboration with Yannis Kyriakides is a piece based on old telegraph code books. I use scanned pages combined with microscope texture from these books and project onto the orchestra from two sides, using the musicians as screens in combination with a wide screen behind, trying to create a dynamic space using text fragments and letters as projected light.

It is a coproduction between ZKM in Karlsruhe and Musikfabrik in Cologne, and is performed may 17th in Cologne and on the 18th at ZKM.

Synk at Dansstationen in Malmö

Synk, originally uploaded by hc gilje.

On Friday May 4th, I perform the piece Synk with Kreutzerkompani and Justin Bennett on sound. Synk was originally made in 2002 for the Ultima festival, but has been played quite a few times the last five years.

The idea of Synk was that no prerecorded video or audio would be used, only material sampled during the performance was allowed, to investigate live as raw material : to impose a structure on a live situation to allow for unpredictable results within that frame structure.

It creates a dialogue between the physical space on stage and the mediated space from the screen and speakers, and the relation between the memory and the present of a space.

More info on Kreutzerkompani and Justin Bennett

More images from Synk (click on the small images)

 

Michael Naimark: Displacements

this image found in the archives of the eyeteeth blog

This is one of the projects I wish I had done, uniting the capturing of a space and the projection back into the same space using motion (camera+projector rotating at same speed).

The camera is mounted in the middle of the room on a turntable, recording the space and the actions in it (top image). Then the whole space is spraypainted white (middle image). Finally the recorded film/video is projected back into the space, projector mounted on the same turntable as the camera was (bottom image).

The first version was done with film in 1980-84, then made for digital video in 2005.

Naimark has written two very interesting papers relating to this work, and you can also find two videoclips from the installation, one from the film version and one from the digital video version, on his website.

lab jan 2007: masking projections

lab jan 2007, originally uploaded by hc gilje.

(Slideshow of more images from the projection sketches here)

The second focus in this lab session was to work with video projections, and masking them to create several projection surfaces from one projector, and to be able to relate to physical shapes in the room, like my projection on a sphere in Iball, or the masking of video to fit the gallery spaces in one of the sleepers installation:

The simplest way to do it is to work with a 2 dimensional mask. I also wanted to try to work with 3D masks: projecting a virtual 3D version of an object back onto itself. In this way I managed to cover 4 sides of a cube with 2 projectors. Another thing I did was to link the individual projection surfaces (from one projector) so focus could move from one area to another, quite like how the nodes in nodio operate.

Finally, I did some simple tests using the projector as a light beam.

 

Dense, installation 2006

Dense 01, originally uploaded by hc gilje.

(Slideshow of more images from Dense here)

A doublesided videoprojection on six vertical strips of half transparent material at different depths in a blackbox space. One projection creates downward movement and the other a movement from side to side, thus creating a video weave on the projection surface where the projections overlap. The audio is generated by the changes in the video, one a dry chirping sound which pans with the horizontal movement of the video, the other is created by the downward movements of the other video, creating a very loud, deep sound resonating in the space. Moving around in the space is like walking inside a videomixer, perception of image and sound changes dramatically as you move inside the installation.

The installation was comissioned for the opening of the 2006 season of Black Box Teater in Oslo, and was developed during my residency at Tesla, Berlin in autumn 2005.