AVIE in 3D at Shanghai’s eArts Festival Last month’s eArts Festival in Shanghai offered a three-week program of events performances and 3D installations uniting artists from all over the world and creating a fusion of art and new technology. The activities took place across a range of venues each with its own theme. At the Shanghai Science & Technology Museum the theme was eLandscapes where the Advanced Visualization and Interaction Environment was displayed. The AVIE saw 12 of projectiondesign’s F20 sx+ DLP projectors firing two polarized stereoscopic images over the entire surface of a 360-degree screen which can be viewed by 30 or more visitors using polarizing glasses. A cluster of seven high-performance graphics PCs delivered the image data to the projectors using custom geometry correction and edge-blending software. As well as the eArts installation projectiondesign F20 sx+ projectors will also be used for another project Place-Hampi co-authored by Sarah Kenderdine and AVIE pioneer Jeffrey Shaw an Australian-based artist and director of the UNSW iCinema Research Centre. Place-Hampi will include a series of 3D stereoscopic panoramas inspired by the drama of Hindu mythology. It opened on November 12th and will show for the next 15 months (ending January 2010) at the Immigration Museum in Melbourne Victoria Australia. At eLandscapes curator Richard Castelli sought “a total re-working of the screen-spectator relationship for which new technologies and new narrations are necessary.” As well as AVIE a similar panoramic exhibit using two F20 sx+ projectors took place in the Hampi exhibit. Five F20 sx+ projectors were used in a dome configuration in the Hemisphere exhibit. A further six F20 sx+ projectors were shown in the Globorama as well as 12 projectors configured in a hexagonal back projection in the Virtual Room exhibit. Industry-veteran Thierry Ollivier sales manager at projectiondesign manages the Russia Japan Korea and France territories and played a key role in supporting the numerous projects and sponsorship of the touring. “As video projector manufacturers it is our responsibility not just to give our backing to established business and domestic applications of our technology but to support artistic work which has the potential to give people an entirely new perspective on how they relate to and interact with projected imagery ” says Ollivier. “An immersive experience such as this requires projectors with a very high degree of uniformity as well as high levels of brightness and contrast and that is what our F20 sx+ delivers. In return for supplying these projectors we are in the privileged position of being able to see at first hand how visitors react to such an immersive and interactive experience. This in turn deepens our understanding of how people perceive projected images and enriches our own R&D efforts going forward.” Place-Hampi www.place-hampi.museum Shanghai eArts www.shearts.org
