Left home this morning at 4:30 am so I could be in New Orleans at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in time for the afternoon education sessions. SIGGRAPH is the premier international event on computer graphics and interactive techniques. With over 25thousand professionals in graphics research, art and design, animation, games, education, music&audio, production and visual effects, I knew the conference  was going to be jam-packed with things I wanted to see and people I wanted to meet.

The Animation in Education panel preseted a computer science class in Second Life at RIT, a collaborative animation class at the University of Central Florida where the music professors compose original scores for the class animation, and computer science and engineering students who create animations and scene graphs with an emphasis on computational complexity at the University of Pittsburgh. The showcasing of these programs and the students’ resulting work gave me some ideas, but also made me very proud of the work of our Ramapo College animation students. Good work!

Next, I went to the Making It Move Talk where our friends at Electronic Arts Canada explained how they create their physics-driven animation for Fight Night 4. It starts with motion capture tied to a dual rig with joint limits and without, and then physics systems which are tied to the soft body simulations of the models (so the jaw flaps when punched) which sit on top of the rigid body.  Particle systems are then tied to the physics systems (so the spittle and blood fly…)  I was the most impressed by the simplicity of how EA created varieties of scale of muscle tension ont he characters. This was created with shader blending between two surface maps: one of map of bare muscle structure and the other of the basic body shader.

Terran Boylan, the FX Animator and Character Technical Director at Dreamworks also demonstrated the complicated BOB character from Monsters VS Aliens which was part particle, part softbody rig and also had to come apart into sections. He showed the components of B.O.B.’s character rig and the overall design approach. There were a lot of  technical challenges in order to animate and render a high-resolution warped polygonal mesh with a topology that changed in every frame.

I went to the Maxon booth and talked to some of the folks who create plugins, make tutorials and do demos with the software we use at Ramapo, Cinema 4D. I also met a charming robot interface designed by the students in the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon: Quasi. He’ll explain:

Interactive Installation, 2003
3 computers, 3 LCD screens, Machined PlexiGlas, sensors and found objects

Next to the projection is a sculptural interactive installation, Cunning Genus. The installation is an entomologist’s field case in which there are three collection jars – a bursting chrysalis in one, a group of fireflies in the second, and a spider in another.

The computer controlled retro- engineered LCD panels inside the case show the insects moving about in their normal behavioral state. When a viewer taps on one of the jars, the creature inside will respond with strange behavior inversely based on its aesthetic value. Nearby projections show the dichotomy between true scientific investigation and inherent human myths. The viewer must stand with her head inside the Plexi curve, nestling her ears close to two small, whispering speakers. This projection space puts the viewer in the position of looking out from within a large glass jar.

•Vectors: Digital Art of Our Time, Winter Garden, New York, NY, Spring 2003, Curated by Bruce Wands
•Dislodged, West Side Gallery, New York, NY, Spring 2003, Curated by Rachel Gugelberger
•MFA Exhibition, Visual Arts Gallery, New York, NY, April 2003

Encounter, Amends
In two dimly lit cells directly across from each other, a luminous projection of a life-sized figure is combined with spoken words to create a dialog between an offender and a victim in an attempt to heal the wounds caused by crime.
We intend to create a dialog between an offender and a victim touching on the stages of restorative justice, the first two of which are Encounter and Ammends. Encounter creates opportunities for the victim, the offender, and community members, to meet to discuss the crime and its aftermath. Ammends involves the expectation of offenders to take steps to repair the harm they have caused.

This project consists of an audio-visual installation utilizing two Plexiglas curved screens, each approximately three feet across, two video projectors and two DVDs. “Talking head” silhouettes of an offender and a crime victims will appear to float in the air, each inside of a cell. The figure will be rear-projected onto the screen which has small speakers at ear-height on either side of the screen.

Fair Haven

Video with surround sound
11 minutes, 11 seconds.

Quiet green turns to loud darkness in this short piece documenting an oncoming thunderstorm. FairHaven explores the changes in both the real and imagined lansdscapes through the compression and expansion of time. The duration of this piece is 11 minutes and 11 seconds, the same as the duration of the actual storm. But during this time, parts of the landscape appear and disappear in both subtle and dramatic ways- some naturally and some through the use of special effects.

fairhaven_2

•Rage Against the Machine, Spire Studios, Beacon, NY, March and April 2006,
•See Saw, Mushroom Arts, New York, NY, December 2005,
•New Jersey Film Festival, Cape May, NJ, 2005

Large scale public art installation with projections.

Designed by Anibal Pella-Woo and Ann LePore, this collaborative project is an audio-visual installation for the Weehawken Water Tower. The Weehawken Water Tower stands to become one of the identifying visual landmarks of this diverse, dynamic and rapidly changing region. Utilizing a number of video projectors, images of slowly rising and falling water will be rear projected from the inside of the building on to a number of its windows on all four sides of the building. We feel it is conceptually important to create this effect mechanically in order to further reflect on the history of the building and the mechanical pumps originally used within it.

We have created a self- contained “Water projection system” which consists of optical elements and a water tank that automatically fills and empties and acts as a giant slide The image of the rising and falling water would then be transferred to video for digital processing and projection. The images themselves will be visible from outside of the building to passersby. In addition, the light from these projections will be visible from much further away. The choice of image is meant to reflect on the original function of the building, and thereby comment on its history in relation to its geographical location.

15 channel “Video Chorus” created For Peter Campbell’s production of Yellow Electras.

The goal was to create a large-scale projected video that would appear in place of 15 chorus members whose actions and words needed to be timed to each other and to a live performance. The process involved organizing a 15 camera video shoot and created cuing, editing and post -production procedures which would ensure that the resulting projection would be in sync an also timed to the live production. This performance of Yellow Electras which included video, live chat, dance, opera and theater was written and directed by Peter and was a result of his residency with the Ontological-Hysteric Theater’s Incubator program and premiered in July 2008 in New York City.

Special thanks go to students Vasilena Ivanova and Laura Keller who provided shooting and editing support.

Due North

Site Specific Installation
Rear-projected video and 2 channel sound

At Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and architecture school, I worked with architecture students to create maps from memory. I created a route: a straight line between two points of significance: one of aesthetic value on the Taliesin grounds and one of social importance in the neighboring community of Spring Green.
From this came a video which would be an extension of the idea of outreach. Interviews with area residents, architecture students and even some of Frank Lloyd Wright’s contemporaries and family members determined which views and sites were selected for the installation.

The end result was a rear projection installation which used the largest window in Mr. Wright’s home on the crest of a large hill. Looking at his home, and facing North toward the small town of Spring Green, members of of both communities came together to watch the steady advance through the landscape (and even through the very building that hosted the projection), until finally, they were transported from Taliesin to the center of Spring Green.

Honey Locust Layers
Installation
Tree, projection, animated shadow.

The strata that make up an urban landscape consist of many layers: bedrock, land cleared of vegetation, infrastructure systems, street-level concrete paving,
and buildings. Currently, with one eye on upscale urban development, and another looking toward growing concerns of global ecology, plant life is bring returned to city-scapes. In many cases this added value comes in the form of street trees, which are added to the top layer of concrete strata, not quite replacing the natural arbors that came
before them.

In this piece, the dormant urban tree is without foliage, but the shadow of the tree is animated, showing shoots, leaves and blossoms unfolding. The tree is illuminated by the projector displaying the animation. The placement of the light source, (the projector) mimics that of a street lamp. The animation which incorporates the actual shadow of the tree, is projected onto the tree, spilling onto a wall or the ground, and appears as a continuation of the tree’s shadow.

Originally a proposal for the Madrid Abierto, Wendy Wolf and I wanted to combine my projection/object work with her cut garlands. The first installation of Honey Locust Layers was with a smaller tree, approx 4 ft high, at the Spring Garden Studio in Philadelphia. The bare-limbed tree was draped with her paper garlands of hundreds of leaf-replicas. Then I manufactured a projected shadow to represent the tree with lush foliage.

For the second incarnation of Honey Locust Layers, I worked alone, without the garlands, or the wonderful Wendy, in a storage space in the basement of the Berrie Center at Ramapo College. This time, I used a larger tree, 6ft 6 inches, was carefully stripped of its leaves, measured and photographed. Nest the tree was modeled in 3D space using Cinema 4D software. Then an animation of leaf growth was created for the model. The final animation was projected onto the tree to match its shadow and create an additional “shadow” of the growing shoots and leaves. The only problem was when the tree and projector were moved to a new space. Somehow, the animated shadow no longer matched the real shadow cast by the projection beam and the whole model had to be rebuilt with the software, while projecting the results of each test in the new space. Afterward, the projector model, height and all positions were carefully measured and mapped for future installations.

Temporal Voice and Classical Object

Interactive Performance,
Turntables, mixer, computer, large screen projection

Temporal Voice and Classical Object is a video performance that plays with the resonance of classical opera in this time of “Nobrow” culture marketing. Classically trained singers have been recorded serenading their favorite Laser Dunks, Technics 1200s, or PSPs with Italian and Latin arias. The resulting video and audio are then “scratched” or re-mixed using computer-modified turntables.

Via this turntable manipulation, the videos are manually slowed down and using a careful back and forth scratching motion. Heavy breathing and subtle seductive gestures are revealed: The singers are serenading their favorite “cool” objects, but who is seducing who? The viewer may at first assume these young singers are engaging each other until a slow pull- back reveals that the objects of their affection are just objects.

First performed in 2006 at the Berrie Center Theater in Mahwah, New Jersey, Temporal Voice is a portable and expandable interactive performance, installation, and object that can be scaled to nearly any space.