On Tuesday I assembled a small posse of visualists at the State Library of Queensland to test the venue for our proposed projection mapping setup at the Game On Launch Party later this month.

As with any tech run, we discovered good and bad news. The good: That venue is just as cool as we had expected. The bad: We didn’t have access to the truss we’ll be mounting our projector on for the launch, so “real” 3D mapping isn’t really an option for this project, as we have contributors from around the world delivering content, and our pre-show setup time is extremely tight.

Fortunately, VVVV ninja Kyle McLean came to the rescue with some quick patching which allowed us to identify the most promising surfaces for “2.5D” mapping.

Projection Mapping Test - Game On from Jaymis on Vimeo.

So we’re not going to be able to unleash the full might of our 3D model on the event, but this does mean that content will be a little easier to produce as we’re back to reasonably boring rectangles. Karl Kwasny has also given us some fantastic custom game character illustrations to work with for our animating and remixing pleasure.

More instructions and links to our models and resources are now online at CDM Labs.

If you haven’t already got in touch with me and you’re now totally inspired and would like to get involved, email gameon@createdigitalmedia.net and I’ll bring you into the loop.

shift v.2, audiovisual installation at Museet for Samtidskunst from hc gilje on Vimeo.

HC Gilje sends along Shift, an “audiovisual landscape that combines multichannel sequencing, audio generated by video, and mapping/masking projection onto physical objects.” In short, big blocks become a sonic, visual sequencer through digital audio and projection. It’s really evocative to me, and part of what we’re talking about as we talk about the potential of mapped projections. (I hope that, for you as for me, it starts to make you think of other possibilities with these kind of media.)

HC’s research is “conversation with spaces,” and that’s fitting — after being caught doing visuals without real sound, or stuck in a “flatland” of our own making that’s in two-dimensional projection, visualists can now enter space.

From his research blog (which has lots of other interesting philosophical reflections, as well):

I decided to give my current series of relief projections a name, shift: moving from one place to another, changing the emphasis, direction or focus of something. It also has a loose relation to the idea of shapeshifting. As mentioned in my previous posts about my relief projection projects, shift combines multichannel sequencing, audio generated from video, with masking/mapping a projection to fit physical objects. This creates a dynamic audiovisual landscape, a spatial light painting. The software to create the installation has developed over almost two years and some workshops, and I have shown documentation of the development, but never exhibited it as a final work. It is only this autumn that I have found the right opportunity to show it in an exhibition. I was invited to participate in the Total Aktion exhibition at Museet for Samtidskunst in Roskilde, Denmark. I had the opportunity to exhibit there in 2005 as part of Get Real, a exhibition with real-time art as the focus (which was also shown at Kiasma in Helsinki, Finland). It also resulted in the book where I wrote the essay “Within the space of a moment”.

Shift became a sort of drone installation, with slow light/colour changes of volume, sometimes cut off by sharp white planes. The video documentation is a cut version showing some of the different scenes. Here is a slide show of still images.

shift v2: relief projection installation

Keep sending this stuff in — your own work or others’ — as we hope to have a round-up soon.

The Projection Tool

Conventional projection hasn’t come very far since the magic lantern days of a century or so ago. Projector + flat, rectangular surface = image. But naturally, with computers, it’s possible to do far more.

The idea is to contextualize a projection in its surroundings, and give the illusion that instead of being simply a rectangular surface (not that there’s anything wrong with that), the image interacts with the reality of a space, objects, and surroundings the way we’d expect. Our own Jaymis Loveday asked last week about the possibilities of mapping — check out the discussion that ensues. I know he’s working away on some projects, but I have to point to the magical, evocative video above of some experiments. ggml writes:

hello. here is a clip with some mapping scenes i have done in recent months using vvvv. they are contextual approaces to improvisation sets, made on the fly, rather than pre-mesured setups. lines are drawn with a 2d drawing-patch, using a mouse pointer, observing the projected image in real space rather than the screen image. other objects are put into proper perspective using the homography node (something like PSP’s distort).

And several of you pointed out that vvvv, the Windows-only, 3D and visualist-savvy generative modular tool (free for non-commercial use) has an edge in this stuff. The reason: the ever-vigilant vvvv community was nice enough to put together an extensive tutorial.

How To Project On Complex Geometry [vvvv wiki]

It’s listed as a work in progress, but like other corners of the rich and wondrous vvvv wiki, there’s quite useful stuff there, made friendly even if you’re new to the topic. Now, the actual topics covered so far are just the basic first steps, but they should get you going. For fancier techniques, I hope this is an area we’ll revisit over the coming months. If you’ve got more resources, send them our way and perhaps we can put together a wiki page of our own.

And yes, I’m now back from my European Road Trip which means you can again look forward to daily posts on the CDMs.

As mentioned in the call for artists, I have a project coming up which involves projection mapping in a venue which seems to have been designed with visuals in mind.

Doing research for this project I’ve discovered that there’s a dearth of resources for artists taking their first steps into projection mapping. The “traditional” technique is to follow the manual-labour route and make a mask in photoshop, or position planes in After Effects:

Video from Deepvisual

However, we’re hearing great things about VVVV’s new projection mapping techniques, and have seen so many great generative projection mapped projects in the past, it seems a pity to take the easy* way out.

So as the Game On project progresses, we will be putting together a CDM Projection Mapping guide, to get today’s visualists up to speed on this sexy yet mysterious technology. If you’d like to contribute to this project, or have a tool or technique which you think should be featured, get in touch (gameon@createdigitalmedia.net or contact form).

(*Note: “Easy way out” may turn out to be anything but easy.)

A month from now sees the launch of the Barbican’s fantastic “Game On” exhibition at the State Library of Queensland, and for the opening I’ve been asked to put together some “traditional” and projection-mapped visuals. As the exhibition covers a wide range of gaming genres, the aesthetic is hugely varied, so rather than keep the gig all to myself I’d like to open this project up to the CDM community.

Game On: Pixels Evident

The event will feature VJ-mixed DVDs projecting on screens shaped like the “8-bit Cloud” in the above photo, and projection mapping on the State Library’s excitingly shaped “Knowledge Walk” architecture.
I have a budget for content creation and remixing, and would love to have Australian and international visualists lending their photons to this event, which is both held in a great-looking venue and features eminently geek-friendly content.

If you’d like to get involved, nominate someone else, or suggest some great raw material for inclusion (apart from Analog Recycling’s 8-Bit Loops, which of course will be making a tongue-in-cheek appearance) email gameon@createdigitalmedia.net (or of course use our handy contact page).

Simple shapes with effective use of 3D mapping to a scaffold covered with semi-opaque scrims.

From French crew Exyzt, who also have released a minimalist Mac video instrument: Cowboy Bitmap.

via VJ.TV

Its been an opportune few weeks for visualists in Europe, with a spread of three festivals all with their own take on the field. Here’s a quick tour through the eyes and itinerary of one *spark.

• Late at Tate: The AV Social; 4th April
• NODE08: Forum for digital arts; 5-12th April
• Mapping: VJing and Audio-Visual Festival; 10th-20th April
• Vision’r: Festival VJ; 17th-20th April
• Resolume 3 & Freeframe 1.5
• On the horizon: Visual Berlin and Live Performer’s Meeting

Tired of flat surfaces? Joanie Lemercier, known by the name antivj, was seen here recently with a terrific tutorial on Wii VJing. Now antivj is back with a terrific video performance, projecting onto 3D forms.

just did a new video, and I thought you might be interested as well: it’s a visual performance I did in January (for clubtransmediale festival in Berlin). The idea is to use regular projectors to project on 3D elements and volumes instead of screens. It’s called “visual mapping” (here on some sculptures done by visomat)

Visomat, Inc. did the polygonal forms, as Joanie added a second layer of “light sculpture.” It’s far more satisfying than just watching virtual polygons projected: the 3D forms are real. Video and lots of images at the project site:

Light Sculptures @ Club Transmediale

I hope we’ll see this more regularly. Of course, that probably means some of us visualists not lucky enough to have a collaborator better learn some physical sculpting skills fast — and re-learn how to get projection onto surfaces!

VJing with flickr? Clubbing with Yahoo Maps? Flash/Flex and Apollo-based apps present some interesting new ideas. We’ve been tracking the excellent Flash 9-based Onyx VJ tool, among others, and it’s nice to see the “open source Adobe-based VJ app” category growing. Mute is very early in development, perhaps not as far along as Onyx, but here’s a quick look at what it offers:

1. Multiple filters and layering options, unlimited scalability (as with Onyx)
2. Lovely, easy controls with contextual help


3. Windows-compatible now, but Mac and Linux support coming


4. flickr and Yahoo Maps support for unusual content


5. Fully open source (meaning these projects could merge / fork into other things — check out that source!)

You can grab the Windows beta now, or inquire about Mac compatibility.

Mute VJ Project Page

I like the open source idea here, because so many visualists are developing their own projects and need a way of integrating them without reinventing the wheel. In sound software, this is pretty easy — just route audio from one place to another. But in visual software, you need everything to be integrated on the same output to the display, even more so if you’re not using a mixer (and many of us computer-based folks aren’t).

Let us know if you’ve got projects of your own or want to share more about Mute or other tools.

Video overview from the product creators:

Thanks to Yansky for the great tip!