Coolux Pandora’s Box 5.1 Released
Pandora’s Box Version 5.1 has been released and is available at their DOWNLOAD SITE. This latest release offers a range of new features including AES 256-bit Media Encryption. To protect exclusive content from being copied or misused, users can choose between code based encryption generated within the Pandoras Box interface, or dongle-based encryption that would allow content to be played only during certain pre-defined times or on certain machines.
The new version 5.1 features are:
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Electrosonic at the European Parliament Visitor’s Center
London (May 1, 2012) – The Parlamentarium, the new visitors’ centre at the European Parliament in Brussels, uses a variety of interactive multimedia exhibits to take visitors on a unique and personal journey into the heart of European Politics. Electrosonic engineered and installed the main exhibition audio-visual hardware for Stuttgart-based designer ATELIER BRÜCKNER. The Parlamentarium is the first visitors’ centre fully accessible in 23 languages, and to-date has attracted over 120,000 visitors from across the globe.
Guided through state-of-the-art exhibitions by a personal electronic multimedia guide, visitors see how policy decisions are made and how they influence Europeans’ daily lives. All signage and media is presented in 23 languages, which had an enormous influence on how AV techniques were used throughout the centre.
Electrosonic won the bid for the project in an open Europe-wide competitive tender; the
scope of work consisted of the detailed design, supply, installation, set up and commissioning of the media hardware for different themed exhibition areas. These areas include a pair of 360º theatres, nearly 100 LCD panels, (more…)
MeshWarpServer- My New Favorite Toy….
My Dad was an architect. Well, first he was a draftsman, then an architect. When I was a kid, I used to hang out in my Dad’s office on the weekends (he pretty much worked ALL the time)….but I remember very clearly playing with all the models that were there. They had every imaginable scale of every kind of building- little cars, little people, tiny shrubs, fake grass, miniature trees. Combine this with all kinds of architectural drawing gadgets, erasers, and pens of every hue, and you had a little kid’s dream world…or a parent’s nightmare….
So it was with great pleasure that I came across this video of Martin Fröhlich’s MeshWarpServer that shows projectionmapping in a whole new way. Well, you should watch the video first then read on….
So for all of you that want to absorb the technical details, the following video really goes into depth. MeshWarpServer is powerful stuff. There are many features beyond just mapping, as you’ll soon see:
I plan on overdosing on MWS and doing a full write-up…(just as soon as I get time), but I seem to have inherited my Dad’s work addiction. Make sure to check it out and give it a test drive!
Plus it’s just fun to say “Meshwarpserver….Meshwarpserver…“
3D in the Darkroom
Motion graphics house The Darkroom (PF article on Glastonbury) were commissioned for the Sunburn festival in Goa by Percept D’mark to come up with a stage design and and perform live video mapping on it over 3 nights. The result was aptly named the “Cubezoid Stage” and by the end of the festival was voted by the public as the best stage at the festival. On the final night 20,000 pairs of 3D glasses were distributed to the punters and the the first 20 minutes of Axwell’s set was projected in 3D.
3 HD projectors, 3 Arena Media servers, a whole bunch of 3d! (Speaking of Arena, here’s a review I did for PLSN….) and make sure to check out their website for some pretty good examples of their work…
UVA’s High Arctic
United Visual Artist’s puts out some fantastic work. One only has to look at Origin and Coachella to realize that they are pretty much at the cutting edge of blended technologies. I came across their piece “High Arctic” recently and had to show it off. This was from an install at the National Maritime Museum in the UK (man there are some really great installs that happen there…) that ran from July until this past January.
The installation is based on UVA Creative Director Matt Clark’s Cape Farewell expedition to Svalbard which he took with Nick Drake in September 2010 and fragments (more…)
HES DLV
It looks like High End Systems has upped the digital light category once again with the introduction of the DLV. High End revolutionized the “digital light” market way-back-when with the intro of the DL1….wait, the Catalyst orbital head….wait, …the Catalyst Media server…The DL3, the Axon media server, jeez! It’s amazing when you consider what they’ve brought to the table. Here’s the official lingo on their latest baby: (more…)
DPI Lightning 45sx+ Lights An Entire Arena
OK….not the whole thing…but it’s pretty damn bright in there. The pre-game and intermission display at Rogers Arena, home of the Vancouver Canucks, got a make-over this year that includes four DPI Lightning 45sx+ projectors and Green Hippo media servers. I’ve always thought that arena’s should trick out their team intro’s and halftimes. I mean, the mascot shooting baskets and “shoot-the-puck” contests just don’t cut it any more.
There are also lightweight scrims that come down from the rafters in the for corners of the ice so it really opens the dimensionality of the show. The displays are split into segments by a Datapath X4 video wall processor, creating a 200-foot by 80-foot image on the ice. The DPI Lightning 45 sx+ packs a walloping 30,000 lumen punch with a contrast ratio of 1800:1. It also has an Intelligent Lens Mount (ILM) system that allows up to 10 different presets for lens settings (zoom, focus, shift) that can be recalled automatically. I own 2 of the 35hd’s and I can tell you, these are not your typical PJ’s- they’re big and super bright and it looks like they’ve accomplished their mission for the Canucks.
Voyagers at the National Maritime Museum
I posted a while back on Electrosonic’s involvement with the installation of the AV system at the National Maritime Museum, but I dug a little deeper and found the artists responsible. The Light Surgeons, a multimedia collective based in East London and founded by Christopher Thomas Allen, collaborated with media artist James George to create a one-of-a-kind immersive work called Voyager. The Voyagers Gallery acts as an introduction to the extraordinary depth and range of the Museum’s collections and is dominated by a 20 metre wave-like structure that stretches the full length of the room. Designed by exhibition designers Real Studio, this 3D wave is (more…)
Street Drum Corps “BANG!”
I recently had the pleasure of working a show at our theatre called “Street Drum Corps“. For anyone who hasn’t seen them, it’s a quartet of guys that bang on everything from trash cans to printers to microwaves and drums. They also use grinders and powertools. It’s quite a trip. From Cloweshall.org: “Since their formation four years ago, Street Drum Corps have constantly refined their sound on the road, blowing away audiences at nearly every major U.S. festival with their combination of thunderous percussion and visual stimuli. SDC’s shows are a primordial, stomping blast of energy, theatricality and passion. There’s a reason why members of No Doubt, Bad Religion, and Revolution tourmates Atreyu all want to play with them – why Conan O’Brien invited them to perform on his show – and why The Used’s Bert McCracken has practically adopted them as his pet band. SDC are more concerned with rhythm than genre. In their performances, one hears tribal, rock, punk, dance and industrial, all somehow blending together in a chaotic, beautiful mess.” (more…)
Motionhouse Scattered
Here at Projectionfreak, I’m a big fan of modern dance and the incorporation of projection technology, so it was a thrill when I came across Motionhouse, one of the UK’s cutting-edge dance theatre companies. This is a sample of their work entitled “Scattered” that fits the bill nicely. Scattered explores our relationship with water and it uses some pretty clever staging to show this off. A large, curved ramp (kind of like a skate half/half pipe) (more…)
3Destruct-AntiVJ
I don’t have a lot of information on this one….but anything AntiVJ does is of very high quality and I love their work. Legoman a.k.a. Yannick Jacquet is the designer here and it’s a great piece of work. I’ll post some more AntiVJ in the very near future so stay tuned!
Playback Pro Plus Review
The following appears in the current issue of PLSN magazine (check it out here) and while you’re there….there’s a great buying guide to media servers you should read as well as a pretty in-depth interview with the one and only Mark Coniglio, creator of Isadora, on “Loopdiver”. We ran a piece on Loopdiver a little while ago when it was featured on PBS and it’s great to see the behind-the-scenes stuff on PLSN. All this in addition to the great columns from Vickie Claiborne, Dan Daley, Brad Schiller, Debi Moen, and Nook Schoenfeld.
As for Playback Pro Plus- many thanks to Andrew Wischmeyer and the team at DT Videolabs for the support and use of a unit for review…..it’s a great product and I highly recommend it! (more…)
Dark Matters- It Always Matters…..
Dark Matters is a VJ collective out of Denmark with some fascinating work- here is a video from the Trailerpark Festival back in late July….”put your hand in the hole” for some interactivity- I love it! They used Unity, VDMX, IMIXHD and (more…)
Troika Ranch’s Loopdiver Gets Some Press
In case you missed the PBS broadcast of “loopdiver- Journey of a Dance” on August 7, here’s a link to check it out. The documentary is great and really “dives” into the process behind multimedia-based dance production. Troika Ranch is the dance troupe that Mark Coniglio co-founded with Dawn Stoppiello and their work is phenomenal. They rely heavily on multimedia integration and push the boundaries of dance. Mark is the creator of a software app called Isadora, which is pretty big in the projection community. Often chided as having a large learning curve or being too difficult, I love Izzy to death. It gives supreme control over projected images, sound, show control, etc., and is highly customizable. It’s the app that really got me into computer-based projection control and it’s available here. But I digress….
Troika Ranch offers a wide-array of workshops as well. Some are designed as residency activities linked to their performances, others as standalone events that allow them to share their broad experience as creators of interactive performance. Troikatronix is the software arm of the operation and Isadora in all it’s incarnations is available there. There are some great tutorials on Isadora available. Here’s a link to one here on Projectionfreak that involves Madmapper and here are the videos available on Youtube. We also did a short write-up on it here. The support you recieve from being an Izzy user is outstanding, one only has to visit the forums to see the incredible personal attention Mark pays to the users. It is a very cohesive community and any and all issues are resolved with speed and tact. As far as software-based projection apps go, Isadora is one of the best in my opinion. Give it a go and you won’t be sorry!
Connecting Isadora to Madmapper
The folks over at Madmapper (one of our fave new apps) have a great tutorial on connecting to Isadora (one of our other fave apps). It uses a QC patch through yet another fave app, Syphon, to accomplish this. I don’t know what the download results are for Syphon, but given the popularity it’s achieved in the past 2 or 3 months, it’s gotta be huge. Dig it- everyone’s talking to everyone nicely now…….on with the show……
UVA With Creator’s Project on PF
We recently wrote about the amazing computersystem/mapping/creativity of United Visual Artists, a London based design practice who produce all kinds of projection work as well as lighting and art installs. One of their coolest recent installs was at Coachella 2011 and it’s featured at the Creator’s Project here. Dubbed “The Orchestrion” UVA redesigned the Coachella main stage as both a platform for performance and a standalone light and sound sculpture with experimental 
music provided by fellow Creator Mira Calix. After the rave reviews UVA reworked the project and called it Conductor and featured it at Nuits sonores, the French Indie and Electronic festival in Lyon, France.
There’s a great video here that explains it a bit further. Love their work!
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If you really want to be sweet and send us to Coachella next year, or even over to UVA for a meet and greet,
United Visual Artists d3
Recently I did an article mentioning the d3 system from United Visual Artists. UVA is an art and design practice based in London producing work at the intersection of sculpture, architecture, live performance, moving image, and digital installation. Right up Projectionfreak’s alley! UVA’s work has been exhibited at institutions including the V&A, the Royal Academy of Art, the South Bank Centre, the Wellcome Collection, Opera North Leeds, Durham Cathedral and The British Library. Their artworks have also toured internationally to cities including Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Yamaguchi, Taipei, Hong Kong, Melbourne and Barcelona. UVA also have large scale permanent art works in Toronto and Istanbul. They were featured on The Creators Project a bit back and very recently their d3 system was used on a project from Drive Productions featuring a mapping display on the iconic Battersea Power Station.
A little background on this very powerful visual device-
From UVA’s website:
The d3 is an integrated production tool for sculptural media installations. It combines a real time (more…)
Live Design Announces it’s Projection Products of the Year Awards
LiveDesign announced the Projection Products of the Year Today. The winners of this prestigious honor are as follows:
Display: Pixled F11
Software/App: ProjectorCalc by Michael Kohler
Content Creation/Editing: Maxon Cinema 4D R12
Accessory: coolux Pandoras Box Sensor Link
The Pixled F11 is a lightweight indoor/outdoor LED video display module with a 6500 nit output and an IP/65 outdoor rating. The use of Nichia SMD LEDs – at a pixel pitch of 11.25mm – make the display an ideal solution for applications with relatively short viewing distances and wide viewing angles. It is extremely lightweight, at only 3kg/7lbs per tile (15kg/33lbs per m2), the F-11 is four times lighter than the current industry average, removing many typical design constraints and opening up new creative design possibilities for both rental and permanent installations. The ultra-light weight of the F-11 also considerably reduces transport costs and requires less manpower to install. The F-11 is a modular system (45cmx45cm/1.48′x1.48′ tile), specially designed for easy transportation and quick rigging.
really cool feature is the switchable transparency- a manual shutter release opens the space between the rails to allow the module to be opaque or see-through (with a 10% transparency).
ProjectorCalc from Michael Kohler is a program for professional lighting technicians and projectionists. Its primary purpose is to determine the size of a projected image given various information about the projector and its location. It’s for iPhone (no Android yet- big drag…we’re stuck with the TI-99) and available at the App Store.
Cinema 4D is pretty much the standard for graphic creation (at least in the projection world, Maya notwithstanding). It comes in 4 flavors, Prime, Broadcast,Visualize, and Studio- each with their own separate capabilities. Here’s the comparison chart. It’s not as pricey as some other competitors at under $1000, but it’s unbelievable software. A lot of the videos you see featured on here Projectionfreak used Cinema 4d in some way. Maxon has released Ver. R12 and it’s available here.
coolux’s Pandoras Box Sensor link is a module that allows Pandoras box to be integrated with industrial encoders, distometers, analog potentiometers, and contact closures. Sounds exciting, huh? What it means though is the video server can accept input from all these devices and cue different aspects of a show or presentation. Think interactive amusement park rides where a lot of different things happen at once. You used to have to integrate everything with time code (coolux does have a module for this too) or some other wacky get-up. Here’s a write-up from this site from a while back.
Congratulations to all the producers of this wonderful magic from Projectionfreak! Keep on making the great stuff that allows us to practice our craft…
Projection on Water for the Mouse
Nobody does spectacle like the Mouse. It’s hard not to find a Disney fan in the entertainment technology world because everything they do is just plain maxed-out. I got to see their production of World of Color last summer and it was completely impressive. From the robotic water jets to the massive amount of projection to the sheer size, it was pretty great. A partial (I’m sure) equipment list includes: a mist screen that can go 380′ wide, twenty-eight Christie Roadster S+20K projectors, 12 Green Hippo Hippotizers, a Vista Spyder is used to blend and setup the large multi-projector screens. There are too many lights to count (if you include all the LED water jets) and at least four GrandMA consoles with a bunch of NPU’s. I dig overload. Besides the video below, there’s a great write-up here.
Tools, Tips, and Tricks of the Trade- Green Hippo’s Grasshopper
Green Hippo, the folks behind the Hippotizer HD, debuted their latest device- the Grasshopper, at the TMB booth at USITT last week. The Grasshopper is the solution for those that need a single output of HD with 8 media layers in an affordable package. It shares a lot of the software features of it’s larger cousin, the Hippotizer HD, and can be operated as a standalone video player running Videomapper or as part of an Uberpan rig. It can be used to drive any projection or data-display rig you can come up with. I need 10 or so…
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Some Great, Great work in out in Videoland
After seeing and working the Blue Man Group 2010 Tour, I was convinced I had “seen the light”. It is perhaps the coolest use of video/interactivity that’s out there. A recent discovery revealed my new heroes- Bob Bonniol and MODE Studios, who helped develop some of the technology that led (no pun intended) to that astounding production. Make sure to check out the link as it’s a great reference for some behind-the-technology info on BMG as well as a number of other cutting-edge works. Projectionfreak is humbled.
Giant Projection in Sydney Again (Where Else?)
Here’s a look at the official Sneak Preview of the projections that will accompany the Youtube Symphony Orchestra 2011. Where else but down under, where they have the world’s best permanent projection surface? Thanks to Obscura Digital- check out the high res stuff- it’s bonzer!
Be sure to check out the gritty details by continuing to read the rest of the article...
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