Democracy Now! has a feature on the use of mobile projection in Occupy Wall Street. Projections here are simple: factoids are blown up to big-building size, highlighting economic inequities. But the results do something even signs and megaphones may be unable to do, which is to reach a large audience of passers-by without in fact having to disturb almost any physical space.
Mobile projection is of course nothing new, and a topic we cover regularly here, but it becomes visible to a broader audience when involved in a hot-button political action like this. Article and transcript:
Taylor K, a well-known artist in NYC, is featured in the video. He responds:
Seeing that these are ephemeral lights that we’re just shining onto the building, nobody can really claim it as ownership. And it’s not really graffiti, because it will move. But it still has the same impact, to the fact that we can put our message, communicate with our people, right on a canvas that we’ve been given, which happens to be City Hall.
Democracy Now! Is a usual suspect for progressive-skewed coverage, but I found that the projections also featured prominently in a number of bigger press outlets that covered the action.
(Side note: as a former resident of the neighborhood, I’m not sure “iconic” is the word I’d use to describe the Verizon building.)
From top: TouchDesigner powering the Plastikman show, Steve Mason’s Chapichapo.
If you’ve been watching big-league visuals lately, things that made your eyeballs roll out into the crowd, odds are TouchDesigner might have been some of the software in use. The tool, established in years of use but perhaps little known outside a few select circles, has been making waves lately in some very nice shows. Even its interface is dazzling (and, indeed, figures directly in shows by the likes of Berlin label Raster Noton), flying through endlessly-zoomable graphical patching interfaces.
One obstacle has stood in TouchDesigner’s way: accessibility. That Hollywood-sexy interface might leave average musicians and visualists wondering how this would work for them. And a prohibitively high cost for a commercial user kept a lot of would-be users out of the club.
The uninterestingly-named TouchDesigner 077 Gold represents lots of iterative progress on this tool. But with this release, hidden behind that innocuous version number, comes some news that could make TouchDesigner a bigger deal. Sync tools for Ableton Live, developed for the innovative show for Richie Hawtin (more on that soon), bring musical integration. TouchPlayer means you can distribute your creations for other users who don’t have the software. You can add the Player to the three-year-old “Free Thinking Environment.” While a common complaint about TouchDesigner has been cost, the FTE edition brings pricing within reach of mere mortals – non-commercial use is even free.
As new to this edition is an integrated mapping tool, for three-dimensional projection mapping. And tutorials make it easier to learn, atop the nice, out-of-the-box Live integration for Max for Live users.
Here’s what’s new. TouchDesigner 077 adds:
TouchPlayer, a perform-only player that lets anyone run your software free (provided they use it non-commercially – too bad it’s not just no-strings-attached). It’s included with the software.
TouchDesigner Ableton Live Sync Environment passes loops, controllers, MIDI, and timing data from Live over to TouchDesigner. I saw this in action both backstage and front-of-house with Richie Hawtin, in the Plastikman show designed by Jarrett Smith and operated by Bryant Place, and … wow. More on this soon. The one catch, as with a lot of Live extension – you need Max for Live, too.
Cineform (not to be confused with the ancient Cinepak) is a high-quality decode used in film that strikes a nice balance between image and size on new Intel processors.
HD-SDI input and output with NVIDIA’s capture cards.
New tools for displaying stats, working with multitouch and audio, and playing, managing, and blending movies.
OpenFrameworks, an artist-friendly creation environment that unlocks the brain-melting power of code in C++, now has a helpful guide to all the additional power you can add. Just as Processing, the code tool that helped inspire OF, benefits from the vast planetary resources in the Java language, so, too, does OpenFrameworks benefit from an impassioned worldwide community of coders working to make accessible all that lives in the language of C++.
If you have even an inkling of working in OF, go drool over all the possibilities – and, damn, are there a lot. The categories list alone is big, and each has a bunch of tools inside, likely including one that could inspire a project.
Animation
Bridges
Computer Vision
Graphics
GUI
Hardware Interface
iOS
Physics
Sound
Typography
Utilities
Video
Camera
Web
Networking
Of course, what I think might make this mean you’d actually create something is that you can tear off just one tiny piece of this giant cookie of code and nibble away, making some tasty form of art of your own, focusing on your own design.
Greg, who worked on the project, addressed ITP (NYU’s digital art school) alums as follows (Greg, hope you don’t mind being quoted here, but … the secret is out anyway):
I did a quick project with James George to create a directory of all OpenFrameworks addons. It went live today.
We built a site that searches github for all addons and then we categorized them and filtered them. There are so many amazing resources available in OpenFrameworks! From face tracking to animated GIF creation to projection mapping tools to all kinds of hardware control to sound generation and on and on.
Take a look and I bet you’ll think of three new project ideas just from seeing what’s available!
Speaking of projection mapping (again), Jonas sends a project he worked on that’s a spectacular example, one that seems to make a faceless box of a museum extrude fragments from its side and gain new depth. Description:
An audiovisual staging of the Leopold Museum’s architecture during the 10th anniversary of the MuseumsQuartier in Vienna, Austria.
Premiered on 30th of July in 2011.
Art Direction: Daniel Rossa (rossarossa.de), Till Botterweck
Technical Director: Till Botterweck
3D Operator: Peter Pflug
Sound Design: Jonas Wiese
Documentation Director: Thorsten Bauer
Camera: Thorsten Bauer, Moritz Horn, Oktocam Vienna (audiovisuellemedien.at)
Edit: Jonas Wiese
Commissioned by: Soundframe Festival (soundframe.at)
Realized with Wings VIOSO Mediaserver (vioso.com)
We could almost use a feature that tracks projection mapping projects around the globe. We’ve seen Mongolia; this lovely project comes to us from an opposite part of the world, in the Dominican Republic.
The smartly-titled “Last Night a Hipster Saved My Life” is a mapped audiovisual performance with Modul8, featured at the twenty-sixth National Biennial of Visual Arts at the Museum of Modern Art in Santo Domingo on Friday the 11th of this month.
More info:
PRODUCTION: ONDASONORA28c
STRUCTURAL DESIGN: STUDIOTIPO
MAPPING & VISUALS: LA PIXELERIA
AUDIO: ANDANDO BY MUNCHI – ROTTERDAM JUKE
SPECIAL THANKS: MUSEO DE ARTE MODERNO, BUBU VEGA, SURFITO, WADER, ESFERA VERDE
It’s a creative spot for a company – Ericsson (the network folks, not to be confused with Sony-owned Sony Ericsson, the mobile phone company). But it’s worth mention here for a few reasons.
One is, it’s nice to see clever design and match moves, yes.
Two, the message of the vendor in this case – about the networks on which we all live – is compelling, even if here in the service of just that one vendor.
But three, and what put me over the top even though this site is the “Motion” site, is that sound design and editing is what makes these spots work for me. The impact of the motion effects, the stuff on which many readers of this site are most focused, is actually pretty useless without the soundtrack and the crisp, carefully-timed, minimal and expressive sound design. (That’s especially true in the motion spot.)
That for me made this worth posting. Sound can be the punctuation that makes the visual really work. It’s not a separate element as such, even: it makes the visual message stronger.
Erik Sellgren of Stockholm, Sweden-based House of Radon – a CDMotion reader – sends this in on behalf of his agency.
In the latest example of what people are doing with open source Kinect tools and movement, PRICKIMAGE sends a performance that works with the Windows-based vvvv. It’s still a work in process / proof of concept, but I’m really enjoying seeing experiments with this technology. There’s definite potential to be explored. The artists write:
I follow CDM and find it inspiring & informative
Can I share a project with that we are developing quickly
Video sample below is the 1st test promo
This is what we plan next…
A 10-15 minute performance will use the Musion Eyeliner system to conjure magical effects with a performer who will dance and sing live,
live illustration and interactive graphics & audio, powered by vvvv (a multipurpose toolkit) within a simple fantasy narrative. Our theme is
metamorphosis and transition, within which we will play with effects of dramatic transformation visually referencing children’s fiction,
early cinematic and pre-cinematic effects, and animated worlds.
More:
creative direction: PRICKIMAGE
vvvv: SAPOLAB
performer: MC Gaff E
illustration: Martin Wollerstam
event: WetYourSelf!
music: App “Feel Like Dancing”
It’s a multi-national effort, this, but I see at least one person at the STRP Festival later this month in Eindhoven, NL. I’m there presenting on the 25th, if anyone else is around!
Peter Kirn
Jaymis Loveday
Matt Ganucheau
toby
joshue ott
michaeluna
vade
dan-winckler
Momo The Monster
songcarver
dj-rndm
nathanal-lcaud
christian.ryan
craig-dorety
Surya Buchwald
Kyle McDonald
Annapurna Kumar
Sofy Yuditskaya