John Ensor Parker Talks TEDx and Projection
TED talks are all the rage- and this one made my Monday! John Ensor Parker is a projection artist who recently did CODEX Dynamic at the DUMBO Artsfest. His work is pretty fascinating and this video gives just a little glimpse into the process behind making a large-scale work like CODEX happen. Yeah, yeah…we all know it takes servers and projectors and lots of cable- but John emphasizes the importance of knowing where our medium came from….we owe a lot to the past. Check out the article previously on PF HERE. Many thanks John!
Projection Studio Enchants Saltwell Park
London UK based projection artist Ross Ashton, returned to Gateshead’s Saltwell Park for the Enchanted Parks 2012 event, with a beautifully imaginative large format show “Glass House” celebrating the work of Victorian stained glass artist, William Wailes. The six and a half minute piece was projected on to the front face of Saltwell Towers, Wailes’ magnificent former home in the grounds of the Park, and ran every evening for the duration of the after dark experience. It was accompanied by a soundscape created by Karen Monid and the whole work was designed from the start as an integral visual and audio narrative.
A single PIGI 6Kw projector with a double rotating scroller was used to project the images, fitted with a 25cm lens and located 35 metres away producing a 20 metre wide picture.
Challenging environmental conditions included temperatures down to -5ºC and 15 cm of snow on the ground, making it a tough working environment, but also added to the magic and ephemeral nature of the installation once up and running – which looked stunning! (ED.- Doing projection of any kind in weather like this is always a challenge often requiring special boxes to house the units in. Even with the incredible heat they put off, temps have to be stabilized across the whole piece…)
“Glass House” juxtaposed the chemical reactions involved in the process of making stained glass against those of the Great Fire of Gateshead, which ripped through the heart of the city in 1854. The fire, though destructive, was followed by the rebuilding and regeneration of the city. Ashton and Monid’s collaborative works are renowned for fusing specific themes and local history relevant to individual buildings with fabulously accessible and entertaining results. Ashton commissioned locally based photographer Shaun Thubron to visit all the churches in the area which still have intact Wailes stained glass windows, including St Nicholas’ Cathedral, Newcastle and others, which he used as original materials for his PIGI artwork.
The audio script was derived from a number of mid 19th century resources including accounts of the Great Fire and printed documents from the 1851 Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace, which enthusiastically embraced Wailes’ work.
Extracts were chosen by Monid and read by a local community group, the Friends of Saltwell Park. These were additionally composed as multi-layered sound textures.
She also used multiple glass sounds and tones – both musically and as effects – including a rendition of local folk song, ‘The Waters of Tyne’. The sound system comprised two KV2 EX12 speakers with playback via an Alesis HD24 hard drive, and all the original work was created and played back in stereo.
Ashton comments, “I was very proud to be involved in Enchanted Parks again this year, and very pleased with the results. The idea of bringing local history alive and reaching out to people in live installation like this is very exciting and rewarding”.
Enchanted Parks is organised by the Newcastle & Gateshead Initiative (NGI) and Magnetic Events.
Scotch and Soda Please!
And here I thought that was just my favorite bar reply….
Netherlands-based media firm Circus Family combined forces with Jurlights and came up with this huge 360-degree projectionmapping at Gashouder Amsterdam. The gig was for Amsterdam Couture house, Scotch and Soda, for the launch of their 2013 line. Using four Hippo HD’s they were able to pipe content to ten Barco HD20′s mounted in a ring in the center. They used the ScreenWarp feature to cut the roundness and then threw in a couple of Hippo Critters with a 16×16 DVI matrix to finish it off. Technician Menno Broere tells me they didn’t even have to blend the projectors…just masked out some physical attributes. That’s how we like it- simple and clean. So many times this type of technology is ‘over done’ from the production side, so it’s nice to see people keeping to the oldest axiom in show biz- Keep It Simple Stupid.
Scotch&Soda - SS13 - 360° Projection from Circus Family on Vimeo.
Seeper Arts Gets Festive on BBC
Celebrate the holidays the Seeper way! The BBC invited the nation to celebrate the start of its 2012 Christmas Lights in a techno-driven finale at the closing of the One Show Live on BBC one. Clips taken from popular BBC programmes such as Strictly Come Dancing and Doctor Who were reworked by seeper into a two- minute, three-dimensional BBC Christmas experience to kick- start the festive celebrations in a way not seen before. “Growing up in the UK the BBC has always been central to Christmas for me”, said seeper’s founder, Evan Grant. “It’s a pleasure to use such an iconic building as our canvas. This is a great opportunity to celebrate Christmas the seeper way.
They used five of the Barco HDQ-2K 40, Barco’s giant 3D-capable projector in a specially built FOH rig to blast through the infamous London fog. Units supplied by XL Video, natch. XL recently invested heavily in Barco’s latest super high brightness projectors and these were no doubt part of that batch.
The proprietary “SeeperServer” was used for playback of media.
Seeper has done some pretty outstanding gigs in the last year, and you can read more here. By all means, have a look at their website- as well as their Vimeo channel. And for some great info on their process (as well as projectionmapping in general) check out this slide deck.
some great large-scale work!
BBC One Christmas Launch from seeper on Vimeo.
ETC Audiovisuel for Orange
A technician sent me a link to this beautiful corporate gig for Orange done by ETC Audiovisuel. Utilizing ETC’s proprietary “Onlyview” software, they were able to do it with with a whopping 26 Christie 20k’s!
ORANGE / les innovations d’Orange racontées par Stéphane Richard from SUPERBIEN on Vimeo.
Client : Orange
Agency : Havas Event
Art Direction : Superbien
Sceneography : Vincent Coutelin
Production : Fighting Fish
Projection : ETC Audiovisuel
Music : StartRec
Butler Ballet’s Nutcracker
My desk for the next week:
I’ll be running video and various other things for the Butler Ballet’s Nutcracker. It’s a huge production- 100 piece orchestra, 130 cast, kitchen sink and all. I use a Digital Projection Lightning 35hd fed by a Macbook Pro to shoot about 130′. Processing is done with Modul8 and Madmapper. The snow animation that I run was made in Apple’s Motion 5, and the wintery still-shot in the background is a perfect snowy day in front of my house. No real ‘mapping’ per se, but Madmapper makes it really easy to fire up a preset and fine tune the exact size of the scene.
An Inquiring Age
I thought I’d post a piece that was sent to me by John Ensor Parker, co curator of the incredible Codex Dynamic recently staged at the DUMBO Arts festival. Some technical details of “An Inquiring Age” will follow (this was a massive install made possible in part by Worldstage and Nationwide Video featuring the d3 media servers), but for now, just dig the video!
Thanks John!
An Inquiring Age-SHORT from John Ensor Parker on Vimeo.
Massive Video Wall Scoreboard for Pacers
Right here in my hometown! In fact, I got a peek at it before opening night and it looked cartoonishly huge even without being powered up. I might get a chance to get to rig an event around the behemoth this weekend so I’ll snap some more photos….but for a write up, check out Commercial Integrator’s web article.
The new scoreboard features twin 1080p HD video screens (Mitsubishi Electric Diamond Vision™ 6mm LED), each measuring 50 feet long – extending nearly foul line to foul line – by 21 feet high, about 2,800 square feet in total space. In addition to the HD screens running the length of the court, the rectangular scoreboard is capped by a pair of 25 feet by 14 feet full 1080p HD video screens facing each baseline. Completing the interior portion of the Bankers Life Fieldhouse upgrade is a pair of LED video displays, one in each balcony end zone. The displays measure 23’ by 10’ and provide fans with stats, replays, and other game-related information.
Through ANC Sports’ VisionSOFT operating system, the new audio and video upgrades work with the arena’s existing LED ribbon and digital courtside signage systems.
ANC also updated the aging audio system, head end and broadcast control room. The new control room was built out complete with a full 3G broadcast infrastructure with 1080P signals and production equipment to provide unprecedented image quality. ANC’s unique 64-bit operating system maximizes the clarity of the scoreboard as the operating system does not scale its content, enabling the video screens to display 1:1 resolution.
Christie Solaria One- DCI Compliance in a Convenient Package
Christie officially launched its high-value premium digital cinema offering, the Christie Solaria One, aimed at emerging markets and community theaters whose screen sizes are less than 10.6 meters (35 feet) wide. The solution is DCI-compliant, having recently been fully certified for Digital Cinema Initiatives, LLC (DCI) compliance testing by AEGISOLVE, INC. Christie Solaria One is the first solution to begin shipping in quantity, based on Texas Instruments’ recently developed S2K DLP Cinema chipset.
The Solaria One will deliver fully DCI-compliant images at 8000 lumens within the DCI color space and, as the Christie Solaria One+, 10,000 lumens when presenting alternative content.
“The DCI-compliant Solaria One projector won kudos from customers across the globe in our product previews for its all-in-one design, as it ships with a zoom lens, a high-performance Xenon lamp, an Integrated Media Block (IMB) for playing high frame rate movies and Screen Management System (SMS) for controlling the system,” said Don Shaw, senior director, product management, Christie Entertainment Solutions.
“Exhibitors will also appreciate Christie Solaria One’s built-in dual DVI (HDMI) and network ports, rendering it capable of displaying virtually any form of alternative content. And customers should also note that they are not locked into a projector-based, proprietary storage system; we strongly believe that mechanical hard drive platters should not coexist within the projector chassis and that such systems featured in competing solutions are a failure waiting to happen. DCI-compliant, robust, external storage systems based on the very latest commercial RAID5 technology are available through Christie sales representatives for use with Solaria One.”
Urbanscreen Invades America- Rice University Centennial Celebration
Giant projection specialists Urbanscreen came to Rice University to produce the 100th Anniversary spectacle that would be splashed across 3 buildings on campus. From Mike Williams Media Relations , Rice University:
Thorsten Bauer went straight for the heart, rather than the intellect, of Rice University. So when he saw the Spectacle writ large for the first time, even the German artist shed a tear.
“We wanted to make it an experience for the audience,” he said. “It’s not as much about teaching them as it is about touching them.” Video after the jump….
As creative director and co-founder of URBANSCREEN, Bauer led the artists and technicians from Bremen, Germany, who designed the light and sound show that brought Lovett, Sewall and Herzstein Halls, the cornerstones of the university’s Academic Quadrangle, to stunning life for a series of performances during Rice’s Centennial Celebration.
Thousands experienced the awe-inspiring performance over three perfect autumn evenings inside the quad – and outside. One viewer tweeted about seeing a few seconds of the Spectacle from the air: “Even from 15,000 ft. we can tell we missed something special.”
The URBANSCREEN team flew to Rice, its first American client, charged with creating an event (more…)
Christie Ups the Ante at 72,000 lumens
Brighter…must…get….brighter…..
And the jokes about the solar system wanting the Sun back will start rolling in any minute now….
I still want to see a photo, but 72k is pretty damn bright. At some point, there’s got to be a rule about one source being that bright…what if it failed? I know that two 35k Roadies doesn’t technically equal 70k brightness, but I think I’d want an online backup just for peace-of-mind. Still, you have to hand it to Christie Digital for advancing our little corner of technology. What’s the next threshold?
Christie®, a global leader in cinema projection, fascinated leading exhibitors from Asia Pacific with a demonstration of its prototype laser projector in Beijing today. Short movie clips of 3D content projected on a 20-meter wide by 12-meter high screen were screened at typical 3D brightness levels of 3-4 ft-L and then using the laser projector at 14 ft-L at the theater of Wanda Shi Jin Shan Cinema, leaving the audiences in awe.
“Today’s laser projection demo was fabulous! I’m impressed with the ultra brightness and life-like colors delivered onto the screen,” said Ning Ye, General Manager of Wanda Group.
“Christie is committed to creating new technology and maintaining our products at a high quality. We are continuously developing solutions to help exhibitors to project compelling, immersive images to their screens. Today we are pleased to demonstrate our first prototype laser projector to the exhibitors,” said Lin Yu, vice president, Christie Asia Pacific.
Presenting at the laser demo event, Dr. Don Shaw, senior director, Product Management, Christie Entertainment Solutions, noted, “Audiences deserve to see the brightest 3D with 14 ft-L on cinema screens. Our demonstration today showed just how truly spectacular a movie maker’s vision can be realized when shown at the highest light levels, making the shared experience more immersive, and, ultimately, driving more cinema ticket sales.”
Dr. Shaw continued, “Some attendees leave 3D movies complaining of headaches, fatigue, and sore eyes. Just like reading a book in low light levels, low brightness on the movie screen is one of the reasons for these complaints. Delivering more lumens to the screen will help address these effects, as will the advent of ‘eye-easy’ high frame rate (HFR) movies.”
Commenting on the laser projector, Dr. Shaw said, “There’s half-a-dozen different ‘forks in the road’ decisions that have to be made when designing a laser-projection system and most manufacturers will take different paths.” He noted that Christie customers have come to expect the best in technology and service from the world’s largest supplier of DLP Cinema® projectors, operating for more than 80 years.
Dr. Shaw also shared with the exhibitors information on Christie IMB, an integrated media block solution that seamlessly converts and delivers feature-film and alternative content within a secure environment to all of Christie’s 2K and 4K, DCI-compliant Solaria® Series 2 projectors. Following his presentation, the audiences were treated to a demo of Christie IMB showcasing MPEG2 contents.
Christie hosted its first laser projector demo for cinema industry luminaries such as Douglas Trumbull, recent Gordon E. Sawyer Academy Award winner, at its High Frame Rate Summit in April 2012.
At IBC 2012 in Amsterdam in September, Christie gained recognition for the world’s first laser projection of Hugo 3D, a feature-length 3D movie projected at 2D brightness levels. Hugo 3D is the first CPG (Cameron Pace Group) certified movie.
Christie’s Commitment to HFR
The two main goals of Christie’s HFR activities are to help the industry develop the best HFR content and the best delivery system for HFR content. The first goal involves assisting leading-edge filmmakers and post-production companies in perfecting HFR movie creation, so the industry has the most engaging, entertaining content possible. The second goal is to assist exhibitors in showing these 3D HFR movies in all their glory. To these ends, Christie is helping create the standards for 3D HFR movies through formal and informal technology-development alliances with major producers and directors, post-production facilities, studios and technology partners. On the exhibitor’s front, Christie provides one-stop shopping for all the hardware, software and services that enable exhibitors to deliver a filmmaker’s vision in stunning 3D HFR quality
Sagrada Familia- UPDATE
It looks like Moment Factory’s gig in Spain this weekend was a big hit. Check out the video and some stills they were kind enough to send over.
Sagrada Familia (Ode à la vie) - Démo officiel from Moment Factory on Vimeo.
French Canadian visual studio Moment Factory have been invited to create a multimedia show of architectural video mapping that will illuminate the Sagrada Familia In Barcelona, September 21 to 23 during the Mercè Festival. As with almost all of Moment Factory’s high-profile projects, it’s pretty mum on the details as of yet….but look for more details after the opening. Anybody who reads Projectionfreak with any regularity knows I’m a bit of an architecture freak as well, so I always get excited when someone gets to perform their magic on a great building.
The as-yet-unfinished Sagrada Familia basilica is considered to be Antoni Gaudi’s greatest work- a building that transcends Gothic architecture. It’s groundbreaking was in 1882 and it’s expected completion date is somewhere around 2026. A spec like that is amazing by itself, but the structure is incredible. The folks at Moment Factory get to do some crazy high-profile gigs- Madonna’s Superbowl Halftime, Celine Dion, Cirque…..but I have to think a project like projectionmapping the Sagrada Familia has to be more exciting than all those combined. Here’s an exclusive interview from our friends over at Philips.
From their press release:
The latest architectural mapping technology will be used to tell a story of rebirth and hope, projected on the basilica’s richly ornamented Nativity façade.
Ode à la vie (Ode to Life) is a poetic vision of the creation of the universe, inspired by original colour sketches by Gaudi as well as the words of the architect, for whom colour was the essence of life. The result is a 15-minute tribute to one of the world’s most venerated churches. Moment Factory’s team has created a living fresco made of colour, light and sound. Among other things, spectators will see trompe-l’oeil effects, statues in metamorphosis, natural-texture effects on the stone, highlights on the stained-glass windows and lighting effects on the four spires of the Basilica. The soundtrack is by Anthony Rozankovic (acts 1 to 5) and Misteur Valaire (acts 6 and 7). Its style: classical, with electronic and modern touches.
A creative and technological challenge
Moment Factory’s previous work includes multimedia projects involving architectural projections on a variety of surfaces: the façade of the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa, ruins of early Montreal at Pointe-à-Callière and, more recently, the façade of Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City. Of course, the Sagrada Familia’s Nativity façade is much more detailed and thus more complex to map. We had to be extremely precise in the mapping and find the right visual tricks to arrive at an impressive effect. We will use our X-Agora software platform to control the show’s sound, light and video elements.
Limelight Projection Maps for the Skyway International Light Festival 2012 in Torun, Poland
Limelight is a collective that creates monumental projection works. They’ve been fortunate enough to be able to present their work all over the world, and this most recent work is a great example of their inspiration.
I posted about their work at the Sharjah Light festival earlier this year.
"Stars" - 3d projection mapping on Skyway'12 - official video from Limelight projection on Vimeo.
Northland Church Battle of the Bands 2012
I’ve been really looking into the whole cost/quality axiom that plagues projection and set design. I work at a theatre so I see this problem daily- it’s a business that is constantly running up against more for less. I just ran an article on Tom Beg, a graduate student who overcame this conundrum with a few good ideas and some relatively inexpensive gear. I also featured the Indianapolis Opera a while back using nothing but white canvas panels and readily available VJ/DJ software (Modul8, Madmapper, PF faves). With the following, it looks like Steven Hall and crew at the Northland Church have achieved a pretty decent end result with an eye towards cost as well.
Every year Northland church hosts the Battle of the Bands, and this year they wanted to step up the look of the stage by using projectionmapping. You’d think “pricey” right off the bat, but with a little elbow grease and some good ideas they pulled off a great looking stage.
For a BOB format, you need flexibility to keep things fresh. For projection they used two DL2′s FOH and utilized the on-board AXON media servers to fire content. These units, while not exceptionally bright, are readily available and relatively inexpensive to rent (and buy for that matter). The units were controlled from a lighting console via DMX, and they used the collage blend mode in a 2×1 to cover the stage. The screens are where the big creativity came in- using simple 2×4 construction covered in white muslin, they were able to suspend these from their upstage truss. Then, using simple masks (created in Paint.net) they were able to separate each shape onto a different layer, letting them create all kinds of looks. Check out his blog for some video and more pictures!
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Christie Digital Hosts High Frame Rate Expert Panel at SIGGRAPH 2012
CYPRESS, Calif. – (July 19, 2012) – As the Platinum Sponsor of SIGGRAPH 2012, Christie, the first in the world to publically demonstrate 3D High Frame Rate (HFR) projection technology using a single projector, is proud to host the SIGGRAPH HFR Panel, “High Frame Rate Cinema, Impacts on Art and Technology,” to be held Wednesday, August, 8 at 10:45 a.m., at the Los Angeles Convention Center, Hall K. The panel will feature 10 cinema industry leaders, led by Gordon E. Sawyer Academy Award winner Douglas Trumbull and Dennis Muren, Senior Visual Effects Supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic. It will be moderated by Paul Salvini, chief technology officer (CTO) of Christie. SIGGRAPH 2012 will be staged August 5 – 9.
Filmmaker and Visual Effects legend Douglas Trumbull’s photographic effects credits include groundbreaking films such as “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Blade Runner,” and “The Tree of Life.” Douglas Trumbull pioneered work on High Frame Rate cinematography and projection with his Showscan process of 70mm film photographed and projected at 60 fps, and is now exploring 3D at 120 fps. Dennis Muren is the recipient of eight Academy Awards for Best Achievement in Visual Effects, with credits that include “Star Wars” and “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.”
“The SIGGRAPH HFR panel will explore the technology behind high-frame-rate cinema, and look at what it will mean to producers of content and to the audience experience,” noted Paul Salvini. “The panelists are pioneers in their fields, addressing the challenges of HFR across the entire workflow, to provide the post-production and visual effects communities with important guidance regarding the challenges and rewards of developing HFR content for the exhibition community.”
Additional panelists include:
· Jim Beshears, Head of Post-production at DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc., oversees all aspects of the studio’s self-contained editorial and post-production facilities. Jim has been instrumental in creating a solid support system capable of simultaneously managing multiple feature-length animated projects and multiple short projects.
· Matthew Cowan, co-founder of Entertainment Technology Consultants and currently Chief Scientific Officer at RealD, of California, developed RealD’s successful 3D cinema system and is respected in the post-production community for his knowledge and application of human perception to 3D systems, color, and transfer functions in digital cinema.
· Darin Grant, Chief Technology Officer, Digital Domain Media Group, is responsible for the overall technology strategy for the company and its many subsidiaries. He is the former head of production technology at DreamWorks Animation.
· John Helliker is Founder/Director of Sheridan College’s SIRT Centre, a research and training facility focused on digital workflow innovations including HFR and virtual production. Based at Pinewood Toronto Studios, SIRT’s leading edge work is based on a unique set of partnerships with major industry guilds and associations, individual companies, as well as government and academia.
· Luke Moore, Director of Special Projects at Canada’s Side Effects Software, in Toronto, is responsible for identifying and addressing the unique technical challenges faced by studios using the popular Houdini VFX and Animation software. Luke brings first-hand knowledge and anecdotes regarding challenges of managing large datasets necessary to enable higher temporal and physical resolution to meet the needs of new challenges in modern production environments.
· Phil Oatley is Head of Technology at New Zealand-based Park Road Post Production, where his visionary talents have guided the company through incredible growth, including establishing key partnerships to promote HFR research and development.
· Dr. Lincoln Wallen, Head of Research and Development at Dreamworks Animation, in California, and formerly CTO at Electronic Arts Mobile, where he was instrumental in shaping EA’s approach to the mobile business, creating a strong portfolio of mass market mobile games, as well as games delivering a next-generation consumer experience.
“As the first licensee to market digital cinema projection based on Texas Instruments’ revolutionary DLP Cinema® technology, Christie has remained an industry leader, helping the post-production and exhibition communities with the latest-generation products, service, and technical expertise,” noted Paul Salvini. “We are proud to moderate this panel, which brings together true industry visionaries to discuss HFR, the next phase of the digital cinema revolution.”
Salvini added: “Christie continues to forge alliances in Hollywood with powerful proponents of HFR such as James Cameron, as well as partnering with leading post-production facilities such as Park Road Post Production and Weta Digital Ltd., to ensure a seamless transition to HFR and a superior movie-viewing experience.”
Among the movies on the horizon to feature HFR is the sequel to James Cameron’s “Avatar,” as well as Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit,“ both of which will also be presented in stereoscopic 3D.
Salvini noted that Christie recently affirmed its HFR leadership with the world’s first and only single-manufacturer DLP Cinema projector and Integrated Media Block (IMB) combination that meets the DCI specifications in both the 2K and 4K mode of operation. It’s the best combination for producing the brightest and sharpest image and the most reliable HFR solution.
“Christie has earned a solid reputation for accelerating innovations in digital projection technology that includes the first to market a fully stereoscopic 3D DLP projector, in addition to providing leadership in the development and implementation of visualization and immersive technologies,” said Salvini.
d3 at the Diamond Jubilee
We see a lot of palaces getting projected onto these days, but when you get to project onto THE palace- Buckingham, that is, it’s a big deal. d3 Technologies was out in full force with Sam Pattinson (yes- of U2 and Elton John fame…) for the Diamond Jubilee last week and did a massive mapping onto the facade of Buckingham Palace as the highlight of the festivities. The event featured such celebrity acts as Kylie, Robbie Williams, Stevie Wonder, Sir Elton John, Madness and Sir Paul McCartney. A full detail of the event and breakdown of the gear is available at their website, but here’s an excerpt: (more…)
infoComm12 presents some issues….
I picked a heck of a week to go on vacation. infoComm2012 is in full swing at the Las Vegas Convention Center and although I had all kinds of chances to go and meet up with some great folks, they had to play second to my family! BUT- all of my extended family are showing off some great stuff at the show. What are the issues? Which one to buy of course….and there’s the fact that if you attend the show, how does one keep one’s head from exploding whilst on the show floor? Let’s see…..Las Vegas (check), high end electronics (check), massive, mind-blowing projection offerings (check), ummmmm. Can’t really come up with any negatives. Read on: (more…)
Urbanscreen Projects for Vivid Live! Sydney
If you project onto the facades of buildings for a living, getting to do it on the Sydney Opera House must be the pinnacle of a career. Urbanscreen recently got the chance projecting the outside of the iconic building for Vivid Live!. In the past, the festival has drawn such luminaries as Laurie Anderson, Brian Eno, and Lou Reed as guest curators and is seen by over 400,000 people.
From the Sunday Morning Herald Sydney:
“Speaking from Urbanscreen’s headquarters in Bremen, west of Hamburg, members Till Botterweck and Daniel Rossa describe their work as akin to architectural ”remixing”, like a DJ with a song, that gets people thinking differently about buildings around them. (more…)
Bordos.Artworks Amazing 3D Projectionmapping at Mapping Festival 2012
The moniker “3D” is nothing new to projectionmapping, and in fact, the term has been over applied and misused so much that it’s sometimes hard to find ‘real’ 3D stuff. Not the case with Bordos.Artwork. Their recent display at Mapping Festival Geneva 2012 is jaw-dropping. 3D for real in all it’s 3D-ness. You can hear the crowd reaction at a couple of really killer moments in the video. Granted, it’s hard to tell the depth in the video, but the sheer scale must’ve been awesome! Bordos did a great job with this one, but it wasn’t without it’s challenges. 3D, while stunning, poses a lot of issues with brightness as well as viewing angle even under the best circumstances, let alone on the side of a building with a very short throw! Bordos explains: (more…)
DPI updates LIGHTNING Pro Series….
Digital Projection Inc. has updated the LIGHTNING Series, their brightest, most capable projectors, to include warp & blend, SDI input, and HFR 3D as standard features. I own two of the 35HD series and I can tell you- they rock!. They’re circa 2006 though so I wonder if they can update my oldies-but-goodies…..
Atlanta, GA (May 18,2012) – Digital Projection International (DPI), an Emmy® Award-winning manufacturer of high-performance projection systems, announces a major electronics update to their entire LIGHTNING series. The newly-named LIGHTNING Pro Series 3D platform enlists DPI’s latest NextGen electronics platform, delivering advanced image Warp and Blend capabilities, 3G-SDI input compatibility, high frame rate 3D functionality as a standard feature in all LIGHTNING displays, and a host of additional professional features to suit the world’s most demanding large-scale imaging applications. Delivering between 20,000 and 30,000 lumens, LIGHTNING Pro Series 3D projectors (more…)
Projections of the Imagination in Wagner’s Flying Dutchman
A powerful new production of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman by English National Opera (ENO) has opened in London with projection design by Nina Dunn of creative agency Knifedge.
Running at The Coliseum until 23 May 2012, ENO’s new production of Wagner’s early opera is directed by Jonathan Kent and designed by Paul Brown.
Knifedge’s video projections play an important narrative role throughout the production, revealing the tale of the The Dutchman to be a recurring figment of the main character’s imagination.
In a dramatic overture, the audience sees a child in bed at the heart of a dark and wild storm, surrounded by the crashing waves of the storybook she clutches. This sets up the director’s concept of the progression from a child’s reality through a woman’s fantasy to a final obsession.
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- Photo Credit- Robert Workman
The Flying Dutchman - Wagner - English National Opera - 28 April 2012 Daland - Clive Bayley Senta - Orla Borlan Erik - Stuart Skelton Mary - Susanna Tudor-Thomas The Steersman - Robert Murray The Dutchman - James Creswell Director - Jonathan Kent Designer - Paul Brown Lighting - Mark Henderson
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- Photo Credit- Robert Workman
The Flying Dutchman - Wagner - English National Opera - 28 April 2012 Daland - Clive Bayley Senta - Orla Borlan Erik - Stuart Skelton Mary - Susanna Tudor-Thomas The Steersman - Robert Murray The Dutchman - James Creswell Director - Jonathan Kent Designer - Paul Brown Lighting - Mark Henderson
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- Photo Credit- Robert Workman
The Flying Dutchman - Wagner - English National Opera - 28 April 2012 Daland - Clive Bayley Senta - Orla Borlan Erik - Stuart Skelton Mary - Susanna Tudor-Thomas The Steersman - Robert Murray The Dutchman - James Creswell Director - Jonathan Kent Designer - Paul Brown Lighting - Mark Henderson
In creating her projections, Dunn worked closely with lighting designer Mark Henderson to achieve the right balance of intensity, colour and mood.
From a technical perspective, the kit consisted of 6 Panasonic projectors, 12 on-stage video monitors, 3 Catalyst Media servers and a Hog lighting desk.
Nina Dunn, Video & Projection Designer at Knifedge, comments: “One of the challenges I faced was keeping pace with the Orchestra. With the complicated content sequences, it’s all about hitting certain cue points so that music and imagery are symbiotic. But such was the energy that Conductor Ed Gardner invested into the music for this production, I had to rework several of my original sequences to keep pace.”
Knifedge is one of the UK’s leading projection design companies, serving corporate, broadcast, sports, music and charity markets as well as the arts. Other recent theatrical productions have included The Phantom of the Opera Tour, Pippin, AIDA, Backbeat, Emperor & Galilean and Cleopatra.
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