The pandemic has supercharged virtual production. But, is this new technology for everyone or just Hollywood-budgeted movies?
We met in 2009 in Buenos Aires, and we’ve decided to work together. Cecilia comes from animation and Ygor from painting and drawing. We mixed our best and created VJ Suave.
At that time, we used Adobe Flash, After Effects and Photoshop for animation. Later on we met Maki, and he introduced us to Tagtool, a tool to draw and animate in real time.
The first version of Tagtool was a DIY thing, you needed to have a wacom, arduino, knobs and sliders, ps2 controller, all connected to a computer and a controller box.
You needed to build it yourself, it was a bit complicated. Later on Maki and his crew started to develop Tagtool for iPads and we fell in love with it.
Most of our animations are made frame by frame, using Flash, and this takes time and people to work. Tagtool is easier. It’s a tool that allows us to create drawings and animation by ourselves in a short amount of time.
The VR is a very immersive solo experience. You actually believe you are inside a different reality. In Floresta Encantada, together with our crew, we’ve created an experience where participants are teleported to a magical forest where they can interact with both characters and the scenery.
They can play instruments near a bonfire and even drink medicine from a shaman. Each experience is unique as the map is very big. Some people say that they saw a spaceship, others say they had a trip on mushrooms, experiences which are rare in the map. At thee end of the journey all travelers come back to reality with a big smile.
We were happy and we wanted to keep doing moving projections. Instead of keeping on creating videos we wanted to try the performance format, so people on the streets could see it live.
Instead of a car, we thought of a way that could be affordable to us, first a bicycle, and then finally the tricycle as our moving base to project from.
Suaveciclo was created to be able to move our animations throughout the city, bringing joy to everyone who happens to be around. As we don’t use background in the projection the characters look more alive, with a digital graffiti style.
The idea was to take the characters out of the TV screen and make this colorful universe that was inside our heads to merge it with the real world.
It felt like a perfect gap for us to fit in. From then till now, we keep on doing what we love, what is true for us and we believe anything made like that will always be successful.
There have been a lot of adaptations till we got to the actual version of Suaveciclo. First version was very heavy, had small sound speakers and an overall flimsy structure for the projector.
We also had issues as we bought the wrong batteries (now we only use deep cycle batteries). We now have 2 tricycles in São Paulo, one for Ygor and one for Cecilia. What we use now is actually the 5th version.
A few months ago we finally installed an electric battery to help us doing the cycling. It’s also equipped with great sound speakers and a tripod head adapted for the projector.
We like the idea of more visual artists working with images in movement throughout the city. We encourage and help people around the world to build an audiovisual tricycle to express themselves.
Ygor: VJ Suave was the starting point for me. Thanks to that I developed my career in animation, creative technology, virtual reality and music. If it wasn’t for it I would still be doing graffiti on the city walls, or maybe working in the forest.
Ceci: I would be applying technology to some other area, maybe holistic health.
Nowadays it is blooming. During the isolation, many audiovisual artists from all over Brazil started to project videos on building walls outside their windows. They have come together and created a group called Projetemos. Thanks to this group, we can share our animations to be projected in different cities.
Great artists have come out of Brazil like VJ Spetto, VJ Vigas, United VJs, and there’s definitely a scene for vjing and videomapping!
If VJ Suave had a little bit of each event, we would be defined by this mix which is something new with technology, animation and movement.
With Suaveciclo we can create magical moments. We gather people to see the city in a different way, more imaginative. We colour the path with light, expressing love. We think this can open people’s hearts, at least for a second.
Regarding the colours, we have the limitation of the projector. For Suaveciclo performances we carry a 5.500 lumen projector, which is very bright and powerful for a tricycle. However darker colours can be difficult to project. That’s why our colour pallet is always bright, with high contrast and saturation.
Kids are essential for our performances, because they appreciate magical beings. They want to play with the characters. When they do, adults start to believe in that magical moment too: when kids are yelling and chasing our enchanted characters.
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The stage then turned into a ship launched into space with Tobin residing in a hyper-sleep pod. After dream-like hallucinations Tobin comes out actually wearing the suits shown in the animation.
A complex audiovisual narrative that blurs the boundaries between real and digital world, firing all sorts of trickery to cleanse out the audience of all their spatial references. Only when we lose all the anchor points we are truly primed to experience the digital voyage.
ISAM takes us on a journey through the unexplored universe generated by the EDM soundscape of Amon Tobin to the bring us back to the core of the action: the musician and his performance.
In my opinion, Xite Labs major breakthrough is their ability to truly animate their installation, snapping out of the static AV sculpture by delivering an immersive experience where all senses are captured within the space.
Their audiovisual world is disorienting and astonishing as it builds up in front of our eyes, departing far away from the bidimensionality of the screen experience.
Formed in the year 2000 as V Squared Labs by Vello E Virkhaus they have then merged with Tandem Digital Entertainment in 2018 to form XiteLabs.
Through the leadership of Greg Russell and Vello Virkhaus the audiovisual studio continuously executes next level experiential visual artistry.
The duo is always taking “never been done” concepts and turning them into reality. This process always starts with the blank page, and working with clients to define the words, scenery, illumination, content, interactivity, and the means to deliver it all.
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Compressorhead - Animatronics Band
Every year, the organizers propose a controversial and thought-provoking theme set to trigger reflection in the community and cutting-edge experimentation by the selected artists. Innovation in digital creativity is key and the festival creates a sonic space for this.
Every year, the result is an insanely powerful and immersive artistic rendez-vous that leaves a lingering impact awhile after the end of the festival.
In this Age of Pandemic, we are made acutely aware of our dependence on digital technology for work, education, and healthcare. Now more than ever, the growth of digital technology demands critical reflection.
Globalization and economic growth have brought us pandemic and environmental destruction. How can we break this cycle? Can we harness quantum technology to protect ourselves and the world we live in?
Pubblicato da GOGBOT su Domenica 12 luglio 2020
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Immersive installations, interactive artwork and live performance communicate complex statements through sensorial experience, giving us the chance to digest information slowly, at our own pace. Generative art as an antidote to the overwhelming data dump we experience everyday.
Matteo Zamagni, Nature Abstraction
Due to the uncertainty of in-person attendance, the organizers are planning the audiovisual event through virtual platforms. It will be therefore accessible to a wider audience through the experimental use of new technologies.
Patchlab will present art projects online and via AR (augmented reality). There will be experimental computer animations presented in the virtual cinema, remotely accessible workshops and also a dystopian multi-person computer game allowing the exploration of a post-apocalyptic New York. There will also be AV NIGHT, during which we will see unique audiovisual projects in 360° format.
All audiovisual artists are invited to submit their project proposals for this year’s program to be implemented online in an unexpected way.
Proposals can only be submitted via the online form.
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Vj Suave audiovisual live stories are called “Suaveciclos”. They make use of Tagtool, an app for tablet allowing drawings in real time.
These itinerant projection mappings are colorful, imaginative and highly engaging. Kids absolutely love them as they perceive immediately the drawings are made specifically for them to play with.
It’s very hard not being immediately charmed by their delicately funny audiovisual storytelling. And there is no reason to resist! Their communication with the audience is honest, inspiring and most importantly inclusive: none is left out in this projection mapping extravaganza.
The viewer is invited to find their own inner harmony with the sounds and visual elements of the forest in order to become unified with the surrounding environment. The result is an unique experience with plenty of food for thoughts to be snacked upon.
As we often advocate the meaningfulness of the artistic experience depends on the artist intent more than on the tool that is being used.
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Ars Electronica features a wide variety of activities every year: Symposia, exhibitions, performances, concerts and interventions spanning a broad arc from speculative futuristic scenarios to analytical considerations, from provocative actionism to philosophical debate.
Combining amazing artworks with fruitful conversations is the perfect recipe to create a meaningful experience that constantly scans the new media landscape to find the most inspiring projects. The projects are not simply chosen based on their technical realization but most importantly because the social and artistic innovation they incorporate.
The result of this consistent endeavour is the creation of a loyal community of audiovisual artists, researchers and visitors from all over the world that every year reunites in Linz to inspire and get inspired.
Since its inception, the festival has been dedicated to develop new themes for each edition and the organizers are also constantly on the lookout for interesting new venues.
Indeed, the ongoing effort to break out of the narrow confines of conventional conference rooms and artistic spaces, and to stage cultural and scientific encounters in the public sphere has become something of an Ars Electronica trademark.
Stay tuned: Ars Electronica 2020 theme will be released soon!
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From the likes of Bertie Sampson, blinkinLAB, Bob Jaroc, DDL, Delta Process, Dr and Quinch, Enjoy Kaos, Fade In Fade Out, Greenaway & Greenaway, Joëlle, Koolik, L’Aubaine (check out the our interview with her) Lazershaft, Lazersonic, LEDS Akimbo, Limbic Cinema, Matt Lee Vs The Positronic Man, More Eyes, Primary Visual Cortex, Rebel Overlay, REM Visuals, WeAreMidnight.
“Taking the Gas Tower from the fields of the festival world into a groundbreaking new reality, Creative Giants are excited to be joining the team Shangri-La on their voyage of discovery to Lost Horizon, which redefines what a festival can be, creating ways for people to come together and experience music and art in a way we never would have previously imagined.”
Simon Vaughan, Creative Giants
“We are thrilled to showcase some of the world’s leading VJs and visual artists in this way. The physical structure of The Gas Tower has been recreated in exact detail in virtual reality, allowing viewers to look around in full 360 degrees to fully immerse themselves in beautiful visuals. We are proud to be leading the way into the digital domain, presenting ground-breaking artists with innovative and mind blowing visuals as part of this ambitious new form of live experience.”
Pete Thornton, More Eyes
Light based minimalistic blade-runner-esque visuals that will make you feel retro futuristic, with everything from lasers to LED totems and 3D structures in the portfolio bag, all with a dash of Resolume control.
No messing about, this studio based in London have done whopping great visual productions for the likes of Coachella, Boomtown and The Human League (for those of you who are old enough to know who they are).
Interesting looking 3D abstract visuals that look like candy cane, sweet enough to hang off your Christmas tree. If you’re into 3D animation, mapping, photogrammetry, and art in general then Enjoy the Kaos should definitely be an audiovisual show on your AV hit-list.
Immersive tour visuals for Adam Beyer, and for Booka Shade, what’s not to inspire any keen audiovisual festival goer? Primarily focused on content creation, blinkinLAB is a motion graphics design studio based in London.
Their portfolio of work includes tour visual content creation, motion graphic design, music video, tv commercials, idents and title sequences, as well as live audiovisual performance, vj-ing and projection mapping installations.
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The video gaming tool is being widely use in audiovisual art and virtual events. It allows you to simulate real-time scenes and lighting effects. Exhibition visitors are invited to immerse themselves in the surroundings of each installation and can move freely in the room and choose any observation point.
Despite the site-specific nature of the works, the overarching artistic principle behind all of them is the search for a universal language of pure forms. These forms, which correspond to the abstract subjects of the installations, are refined during an extensive detailing process, minimalist in their expressiveness and often even have a functional nature.
The eight installations generate intimate spaces where the viewers sits in contemplation of the structural semiotic elements that compose them: light, sound, movement. Each room triggers different emotions slowly revealing themselves while we explore the space and embrace its unique atmosphere.
The primary expressive element in VOLNA’s work is light and its various characteristics, its interaction with space, as well as its movement, the rhythm of chiaroscuro and the way chiaroscuro scenarios unfold in relation to time. Some works include synchronized sound, created to interact closely with the light’s dramaturgy.
In conclusion the exhibition Keep Yourself Clean attempts to embrace all the real and virtual layers of information that make up each of the works, and then let the works themselves become the determinants of perception.
Each of the contexts will “re-sort” in the virtual world, rethink and obey the laws of perception, and each work, in turn, will become an experience of sensory contemplation.
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The 2020 year theme reflects upon our primitive status in the foundations of the new hyper-informational world, where the data-flux is absorbing the entire existence reaching the status of God.
Is technology serving us or we are serving the data-totem by providing our more sensible information, giving up our privacy for a greater good?
Algorithms, already present everywhere in the digital realm, are reading us better than ourselves, better than our friends and siblings and in the name of optimization of our virtual experience, we are gradually letting them make decisions for us, filter our perceptions predict our behavior, our bio metrics, our emotions.
All manifestations of culture can now be experienced on a digitized basis, translated to a language (code, DNA) and stored for everyone who possess it to experience regardless the circumstances. Markets and Money are transfiguring into intangible algorithmic byproducts. Everything to serve the information flow.
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In spring 2020 Kuflex studio began an experimental project Kusmos Live. The purpose of the experiment was to upgrade the Kusmos system in order to create a interactive online home shows.
In 2018-2019 the Russian audiovisual studio experimented with the innovative tool together with SILA SVETA studio on the Therr Maitz concert, Caprices Festival 2018, Nina Kraviz experimental performance at Coachella 2019.
Scene functions build a 3D model using the data provided by the Tracker and then we can layer all kinds of features with effects on the model and also transform and distort it according to the artistic concept. We also captured video from the laptop’s webcam and sometimes showed its picture. 3D scene acting as the artist surrounding, a set of virtual cameras for capturing from different viewpoints and visual effects were set up in advance in the Unreal Engine. Then the OBS program captures the video of the launched scene and sends it to the video streaming server.
During our second live experiment we tested some new features for the viewers interactive communication with the stream. While Leksha (Smolensk, Russia) was playing his ambient-set, a VJ (Moscow, Russia) was controlling visual effects with the use of commands via YouTube chat in real-time mode. Our team has implemented this function between the concerts and decided not to tell the viewers about it.
During the stream, noticing weird messages in the chat, some of the viewers started to realize that they could not only send a message to the chat but to even affect visualization. In the end the concert has turned into a digital quest. Some viewers picked up effect control by sending particular commands to the chat. We have yet to comprehend how to develop this function in the future.
KUFLEX: Kusmos is a universal software tool, with the possibility of variability of visual and interactive solutions. As a rule, our team creates a virtual stage specifically for the performance of the musician. Of course, we want to upgrade the program creating a database with different scenes, effects. In this case, the user will be able to construct the scene himself and combine the effects for his live/stream.
KUFLEX: Regarding Kusmos Live project, the Kuflex team is collaborating with various musicians. We wanted to support the performers. So this approach determined the emphasis on the figure of the musician on the virtual stage, under whose musical personality, sound we come up with a visual solution. We do not just shoot a video with a musician, as is often done in broadcasts, but create a digital avatar that changes depending on the script, music and VJ control.
We try to achieve the effect of real interaction with the viewer as well. Our team is developing a function of interaction through chat – viewers’ comments fall into the scene, they can affect the content through certain chat commands. But Kusmos can be used by artists of other genres. In the near future we want to try to create a dance performance. Now we are discussing this idea with one Russian choreographer.
Technically, the performer will find himself in different areas of camera scanning, on the screen we will observe how his digital avatar changes. Again, it will all be like shooting a movie in one shot and in real time!
We intentionally did not talk about this function in advance to get the quest. As a result, some viewers guessed and began to help in managing the scene. We explore different possibilities about other ways of interaction.
In the future we want to create a client application for connecting to the broadcast via a mobile phone, desktop PC screen or VR. We intend to develop Kusmos as an art tool. Our team believes in a power of collective interaction. We want to give a palette of visual solutions, effects. Let’s all together create beauty here and now! This idea is a sincere inspiration for us.
We wrote a special function for our software that receives data from chat on YouTube using the Google API. We came up with several commands, for example: cam1, cam2, skin1, skin2, electric noise, lasers and the like. And when someone in the chat wrote one of these words, then a certain visual effect or a corresponding camera was included in our program.
In general, we have an idea to expand the number of commands and their appearance, so that it looks more like live coding. For example, add numerical arguments to the commands, which will additionally specify the parameters of a particular visual effect.
KUFLEX: Yes, this is the main object of research for us. Usually, a limited number of people can come to the offline exhibition. So we want to overcome any space frames. With Kusmos we don’t have any restrictions online! We can find ourselves in amazing digital worlds that are impossible in the physical world.
Now that Kuflex Lab and its creation Kusmos entered our radar we will most definitely keep following their progression, as always supporting innovation and creativity in the audiovisual art world.
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After his first stage of the artist residence, the pandemic outbreak forced the audiovisual artist to delay his return to Iran and continue to develop research and projects in Barcelona.
The talk revolves around the concepts of reflections and mirrors in the Iranian literature, and how the RTT (render to texture) technique in 3D game engines could translate these concepts in experiences.
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PAWTUCKET, RI – MAY 2, 2018 – Announced yesterday at Facebook’s F8 Developer Conference, Hasbro Inc. (NASDAQ:HAS) is working with Oculus to bring Virtual Reality (VR) experiences for Boggle, Trivial Pursuit and Monopoly to people with Oculus Go, for the first time. The VR games will be accessible in the Oculus Store wherever Oculus Rooms […]
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Will VR and AR become mass-market applications? Over the last year, I have been thinking about this from a consumer perspective. A variety of VR headsets are now generally available, and although AR headsets like Microsoft HoloLens are harder to come by, Apple’s ARKit and the just released 1.0 version of Google’s ARCore are available […]
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BERLIN – 24 April, 2018 – Get ready for fast-paced action and innovative bullet-time shooting in Wanted Killer VR—a stylized high-octane FPS coming to Steam Early Access in May 2018. Created by Berlin-based developer Playsnak, Wanted Killer VR casts you as a member of the clandestine WK4 group – an elite team of agents sent in to protect the […]
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25 April 2018: – Yesterday, the boring classroom lesson was finally consigned to the history books when technology pioneers, Immersive VR Education, beam experts from California and Dubai into a virtual classroom to teach students at Langley College near Slough, via a short trip to the moon. Pixar co-founder, Loren Carpenter, will be ‘beamed’ in […]
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June 12th 2018, Los Angeles, London – Ridley Scott has brought together all RSA Films affiliated companies in a multi-business restructure to form the Ridley Scott Creative Group. The Ridley Scott Creative Group strengthens the network across the affiliated companies to take advantage of emerging opportunities across all entertainment genres as well as their existing work in film, television, […]
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