Erranti/Wanderers

“In the suggestive medieval spaces of the Magazzini del Sale (In Palazzo Publico, Siena),
some of the most interesting international video artists and film
makers measure themselves with the idea of wandering, a very ancient theme shared by
a variety of traditions and literature, the paradigm par excellence of the human
condition.

The exhibited works were created during the last decade; they are real “journeys”, or
wanderings of the mind, dealing with the search for an identity, dislocation and
estrangement. These random or planned meanderings set up a relentless “private”
dialogue with the natural landscapes and the architectural or urban spaces.
The artists deal with the subject of wandering according to different inflections; some
relate it to a “loss” and to a dynamic quest (Shirin Neshat, Martijn Veldhoen); some
associate it to the concept of “still dislocation” (Hans Op de Beeck, Kimsooja); some to a
wandering of the mind or memory (Matthias Müller, Jonas Dahlberg) that can also be
accompanied by physical wandering (Seouhgho Cho, Pipilotti Rist, Jonathan
Glazer/UNKLE); some artists thrust the wanderer into the metropolitan contradictory
environment (Jordi Colomer, HC Gilje). The exhibition also hosts the last work of
Michelangelo Antonioni, a concise and intense video showing the artist in a wandering,
poetic and sensuous dialogue with Michelangelo’s Moses.

In the bilingual (Italian/English) exhibition catalogue, published by Silvana Editoriale, the
theme of wandering is further investigated in essays by the curators and artists’
contributions, as well as in an extensive anthology of poems. In a meandering path from
Schiller to Verlaine, from Borges to Luzi, this selection of verses narrates the wanderer’s
poetic modulations from the romantic Wanderer to the 19th century flâneur, until the
contemporary drift.

EXHIBITED WORKS: Michelangelo Antonioni, Lo sguardo di Michelangelo, 2004 - Seoungho Cho, Orange
Factory, 2002 - Jordi Colomer, Anarchitekton: Barcelona - Bucarest - Brasilia - Osaka, 2002-04 - Jonas
Dahlberg, Untitled (Horizontal Sliding), 1999 e Untitled (Vertical Sliding), 2000 – HC Gilje, h.k.mark1,
1998 - Jonathan Glazer / UNKLE, Rabbit in Your Headlights, 1998 – Kimsooja, A Needle Woman - Mexico
City, Cairo, Lagos, London, 2000-01 - Matthias Müller, Album, 2004 - Shirin Neshat, Soliloquy, 1999 -
Hans Op de Beeck, Determination (4), 1998 - Pipilotti Rist, Aujourd’hui, 1999 - Martijn Veldhoen,
Momentum, 2003. “

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.

 

mikro performance

mikro performance, originally uploaded by hc gilje.

Mikro is a series of improvised performances using the immediate surroundings as raw material: A microscope captures everyday objects and surfaces like wallpaper, coins, clothing, furniture, newspapers and transforms it into an explosive universe of textures. Contact microphones and electromagnetic sniffers pick up unhearable sounds to create the live soundtrack.
Mikro is a collaboration between HC Gilje (video) and Justin Bennett (sound).
Performances so far:
Paradiso (Amsterdam), IMAL (Brussels), TAG (den Haag), DNK (Amsterdam), Bergen Kunsthall Landmark (Bergen), Laznia (Gdansk)

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

one year, two to go

multimorf_screengrab1, originally uploaded by hc gilje.

It´s now a year ago since I started with my research fellow project “Conversations with spaces”. It´s been a busy year, and the last few months I have not been able to follow up the blog very much unfortunately, mostly due to my work with the two soundpockets projects I did as part of Urban Interface Oslo (which runs until oct 7th). I will come back to this project in a later entry.
I made a small trip to Ars Electronica, and had a nice talk with Julien Maire and Pablo Valbuena, and I might write a little bit about their projects later.

The image for this entry is from a performance I did yesterday, making a visual landscape for a concert written by Knut Vaage. I used the textures of the instruments, mainly brass instruments, as my source material, and had my first go at programming opengl shaders for the live processing.

I am doing a small tour this week together with Justin Bennett with our Mikro project, live sampling of our surroundings using microscope and EM sniffers ++. We play in Brussels on thursday october 4th, Den Haag sunday the 7th and in Amsterdam on the 8th.
I will also be part of a group show in Brussels, which is the opening of the new space of IMAL. I will show the three-channel version of nodio there.

the loud objects

Marius Watz made a nice video documentation of the loud objects performance he attended at monkeytown.

It is a live physical computing concert, where they hook up different sound components on a overhead projector making it interesting also visually.

Backjumps - the Live Issue #3

Backjumps - the Live Issue #3 03, originally uploaded by hc gilje.

I was back in Berlin for a week in beginning of july, and got the chance to see the excellent exhibition BackJumps -the Live issue #3, which cover new and recent street art works in Germany and the rest of the world. It was partly a exhibition using the huge space at Kunstraum Bethanien, and partly documentation of work from urban spaces. I saw many interesting projects, but will mention two which relates directly to this project blog:
The first one is a animation shown on a monitor in a small room (see image). What´s interesting is that the animation was made on the walls in the same space and you see the trails of the animation on the walls. It is made by Bologna based Blu.
The other project was part of CubaBrasil, Los Berlin BeamBoys, which did huge video projections on buildings in Cuba, partly as a way of bypassing the censorship of certain political slogans and images.

Another useful link, reclaim your city .

I also picked up an interesting book at DAZ, Urban Pioneers: Temporary Use and Urban Development in Berlin. It just came out, but already some of the locations covered in the book have disappeared and been replaced by new buildings.

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.

the matrix for the rest of us (well, almost)

Google Earth has implemented a new technology called street view, developed by Immersive Media

This could roughly be seen as a mix of very advanced quicktime VR and a film effect from The Matrix movies. Interesting to me as another example of the interrelation between space,time and motion.

From the Google Earth Blog:
“One of the many secrets behind their technology is a patented 11 lens camera system that simultaneously takes photos in 11 directions based on a dodecahedron geometry. They can capture 30 frames a second of high resolution photography. That’s right - we’re talking high resolution video in digital 360. You can stop, start, back up, single-frame, etc”

upcoming screenings

shiva 03, originally uploaded by hc gilje.

just a short note on upcoming screenings (and one recent).
shiva will be screened as part of the colorfield remixed program in Washington DC on may 30th.
more images from shiva.

Stacking of different natures will be screened at Kino Arsenal, Berlin, as part of “HARDfilms: pixels und zelluloid”, june 1st and 3rd
more images from stacking of different natures.

Crossings will also be screened at Kino Arsenal in the same series, on june 27th and 30th.
more images from Crossings.

HARDfilms is a series of 7 screening programs with a impressive range of names like Fischinger, Kubelka, Vasulka, Kurt Kren, Sharitz, Len Lye, Nam June Paik, Brakhage, Richter mixed with works from recent years.

Finally, Sunblind was recently screened earlier this month as part of NORWYDEO III Art Video Screening - Vaxhuset i Västerås, Sweden.
more images from Sunblind.