An update on use of the mirror. Today with the help of Martin, managed to put up a screen in the studio and give that ago. Just a curved rod with a shower curtain on. Not the best set-up with shadows of cables in the way, but for a quick look it worked fine. The curve wasn’t as solid either, as the rod was keeping it curved at the top, but at the bottom, the weight of the curtain made it try to straighten out a bit.
Buildings;
I also opened up the media player Winamp, and tested what some moving colours would be like using the visualizations in the program, reacting to audio.
And here’s a video from the side….
Evidently, the progress being made so far is great, yet at the same time it does bother me, as clearly if i had explored this route last term for specialist, i would’ve faired a lot better results. The coloured imagery presented does look cool, but quite possibly my next feat is perhaps working on some form of containment for the piece, and even inverting it all. The aim is to have the projector on the floor and the mirror up top, so making some stands for a screen soon and see if i can properly suspend the dome from the Studio’s ceiling but putting in some wire/string into the lip (which there is already holes for).
So the hemisphere came in the post yesterday, and so I’ve brought it into uni to do a quick test with.
Quick set-up…
The dome…
The image currently is projected on a flat wall, so you can still see the obvious distortion. The next step is finding some appropriate curved surfaces place in front of the light. I’ve tried giving it a go with some paper held up, but it’s pretty flimsy. However, I’m also in the reckoning that the projector as it’s currently set up is too close to the dome. Which is good, as it demonstrates how big the piece will be perhaps.
Also, an added benefit of the curve is a long distance focus issue, as nicely demonstrated in this next picture. As you can see, the image at the lower part of the wall is in focus with the top and ceiling;
So, you can quite clearly see, progress has been made. The next step is as i said, finding appropriate surfaces. As I’m keen to try out some 3d video mapping, and depending on my narrative, i’m swaying towards making lots of smaller surfaces joined together and at different distances, as opposed to the solid cylinder.
It’s looking cool though.
EDIT:
Elliott popped in, so managed to get some photos with some paper as a projection surface, flat and curved.
As you can now see, a corrected straight roof line…
Had a chat today with my friend Joe Barnett about uni etc, and about my EMP. It’s always useful catching up with Joe as i can get a fresh look at an idea from someone outside of the course. In terms of the basic narrative, an artificial omniscient entity learning human emotion., it seems pretty solid. The problem comes across in the physical representation. What Joe pointed out is what’s going to make this experience different to just sitting and watching a story on a screen. Even with the 360 degree element, a certain extent of it is this screen based linear narrative, of viewing one aspect of the story from one angle and so on; moving around isn’t an immersive experience as such. What we came back to was referring to the Future Cinema project in 2nd year. The key part of that was walking into the environment where the narrative was set, whilst events unfolded around you.
This probably prompts a further look into installations as a use of space. Having just one central thing may make the project look weak, as much as the 2-way mirror infinite space may look cool, another option like with Future cinema is the build the project up outside that. The best example we thought of is something like GLaDOS from the game Portal.
Obviously, I don’t have such an enormous space to work with, but the element there is this machine figure. Thinking about it, it makes sense to perhaps do away with a solid cylindrical surface and treat the image plane as something more component like. In addition to that, to have outer image planes, utilising more projectors or something. One idea we talked about was to even have parts of it set completely somewhere else; for example, at the AUCB End of Year Show, having the main part in the Digital Media Production area is the main narrative core, but have other parts of it around the campus. And it could look well tech if i had cables running from them all the way to DMP’s area, despite the obvious health and safety hazard. Anyway, point is, decide how the installation would look like/work, and if it goes towards creating an machine environment, quite possibly could get, as suggested by Joe, someone in Model-making to knock up a set piece….
Here’s a few links back to my Future Cinema, as reference…
I’ve got an image in my head of how this infinite node illusion would work, so I’ve made this diagram and video to show.
Top down view, the square in the middle represents the 2-way mirror box, with the cylinder node in the centre. Looking in you’ll see the repeating reflections. Of course, the first set of reflections, up + down + left + right will be traditional mirror images, so i’ll have to be weary about how content is represented. The Diagonal ones will be reflections of reflections and such will corrected, and the second row/columns will be corrected as well.
Also, here’s a quick video that looks cool. Render makes it darker than what it’s meant to be, but you can still get an impression of the rows upon rows of cylindrical objects with images on mirroring each other….
Discussed it with my dad, and it’s a good price, £81 for the piece, £9 delivery, so £90 overall. As opposed to the one here, http://uk.rs-online.com/web/search/searchBrowseAction.html?method=getProduct&R=0482988 that’s £150. My Dad, as consulting engineer on this project, has done an experiment with a flatter safety mirror and it’s worked ok, and pointed me to get a quarter hemisphere one for £30, but having found this at a good price should work out better. Maybe I’ll get some help with funding this time…
Also noticed, as the item was listed BEFORE the VAT increase to 20%, it’s still at 17.5%. Whether this appilies to all ebay shops or not, it’s something to take into account.
A continuation of Digital Media Production and a further exploration of live visuals, experimental projection, alternative narrative and challenging how we see the moving image.
