Street Language is a proposed art installation at 381 Projects as a part of Nuit Blanche 2012 in Toronto, Canada. The project is being produced by Red Bull Canada.

The installation builds on concepts designed for MUTEK 2012 in Montreal, QC. Using a series of sensors both inside and outside the venue, a live generative visual and audio landscape is created as a visceral representation of audience experience during the music programming to take place inside. Sensors will include sound, movement, abstract video, and Twitter visualization. This generative landscape is then projected on to the sidewalk surrounding the venue.

My Role

As Technical Lead I will be designing the entire software and hardware pipeline of the installation including sensor software and the generative audio-visual environment. I will be working with the team to further develop the database backend to include media. As the project progresses, I will also supervise the technical budget, technical documentation and specifications, previsualizations, and installation guides.

Team

Malcolm Levy

Matt Marshall

Awais Iqbal

Sarah Cole-Burnett

Jennifer Lauren Campbell

Echo was a proposed permanent installation concept for Fleetwood Gardens in Surrey, BC.

This concept consists of a series of large, chrome-dipped petals that reflect sunlight into various flower-like formations on the ground, complimenting the flora of the garden.

My Role

I worked with Malcolm Levy and Innes Yates throughout the concept development process, creating pre-visualizations, developing a project budget and proposals. The conceptual designs were pre-visualized in Maya, making use of mental ray caustics for simulation of light interactions.

What I Learned

This was my first experience of working on a permanent public art installation and becoming familiar with various challenges presented by this context including production processes, budgeting, and public space safety. I also took this opportunity to become more familiar with CG lighting in Maya – particularly with caustics and reflection.

Team

Malcolm Levy

Matt Marshall

Innes Yates

play || jazz is an upcoming art installation for Vancouver International Jazz Festival 2012. Through Kinect-based motion interaction, users can interact with a large generative visual and audio environment for the creation of music.

My Role

As Technical Lead I am developing the hardware and software pipeline for the installation, as well as creating the generative visual and audio environments. I also supervise all technical documentation including budget, proposals, pre-visualizations, installation guides and technical riders.

Team

Malcolm Levy

Matt Marshall

Sarah Cole-Burnett

The Humans A/V is a mobile hardware/software installation that accompanies live performances by electronic music duo Humans. It was first tested at the Biltmore Cabaret in Vancouver, BC. A second deployment will be made at Open Studios in Vancouver with the final screen/software setup being showcased at SxSW in Austin, Texas.

The visuals are generated live via custom-made Processing Java application, utilizing a GLGraphics compositing environment using Malcolm Levy’s Other Frames work combined with a textured particle system that reacts to live sound.

The application supports MIDI to control various aspects of the visuals on-the-fly, and Syphon output for MadMapper usage.

My Role

As Technical Lead I develop the system’s hardware and software pipeline. I developed the Processing application, and work with Hybridity Music and the band to adjust visuals and build live control schemes via the MIDI integration. I also oversee all aspects of technical documentation including pre-visualizations and technical riders.

Team

Matt Marshall

Malcolm Levy

The presently unnamed project is a large-scale interactive art installation currently proposed for MUTEK 2013 in Montreal, QC. This art installation consists of audience tracking at venues across the festival, the information from which will then be made available through custom-designed web and mobile applications, and large projection mappings across the city.

This project is the first in a series of art installations surrounding the idea of audience visualization, audience interaction and “art in the cloud” – creating a wirelessly-accessible database of dynamic audience information created from a variety of on-the-ground sensors, which can then be downloaded and remixed live in a variety of contexts (projection, web, mobile, etc.)

My Role

As Technical Lead / Lead Designer I will be designing the entire software and hardware pipeline of the installation from audience sensors, to database backend, to live visualization software. I will also be developing the visual style of the visualizations in their projection-mapped, web and mobile forms.

Throughout the creation process I will also be creating all necessary technical documentation for the project including budgets, schematics, pre-visualizations, and installation guides.

Team

Malcolm Levy (Director)

Matt Marshall (Technical Lead / Lead Designer)

Awais Iqbal (Additional Programming)

Passages is a large-scale projection mapping installation for 800 Yates St. in Victoria, BC as a part of transmission: Global Summit 2012‘s TransmitLive programming produced by Hybridity Media. The visuals are directed by Malcolm Levy and audio elements are produced and performed by Jeremy Greenspan (Junior Boys).

My Role

As Technical Lead, I designed the software and hardware pipeline for the visuals performance and developed the two main content creation tools. I also supervised the overal technical production, preparing technical documents, installation guides and pre-visualization graphics for proposal and funding purposes.

The first software tool was an iterator of Malcolm Levy’s Other Frames work. This tool was built in Quartz Composer and allows live control of iteration speed, colour correction for projection, and Syphon input/output support for pipeline integration.

The second software tool is a live particle system that integrates BC Ferries route data and scheduling to provide a visualization of a “day in the life of BC Ferries”. All aspects of the particle system and camera are manipulated live via MIDI control. This system was designed to allow both literal interpretations of BC Ferry routes and more radical abstract visualizations. The particle system was built from the ground up in Unity with Javascript and C#.

Output from both tools are combined and then projections are mapped with MadMapper to the facade of windows.

Team

Malcolm Levy (Director)

Jeremy Greenspan (Audio Director)

Matt Marshall (Technical Lead)

Pixellations is an in-progress set of digital artworks built around themes of geometry and distortion. These works take the form of video or still images and are produced by a wide variety of software.

These works are collected as a series of reference material for unrelated or future works. These pieces can be combined with other, realistic works to provide additional texture and colour fragmentations to formulate a unique look and style through blending of colour and texture. These kind of applications take place quite regularly in my practice and help to define the style, textures, and palettes of current or upcoming projects.

My Role

These works are produced independently by me.

What I Learned

With many of these projects I attempt to learn new software or explore new techniques in creating visual imagery. With this set I explored intersections of analogue and digital in Photoshop, caustics/reflection/refraction in Maya and particles and fractals in After Effects.

The Pixel Dreams interactive art installation was commissioned by Great Northern Way Campus to help celebrate the groundbreaking of the new Centre for Digital Media. The project was developed with a month and a half of concept development and a month and a half of production with a team of five.

Through the concept development and prototyping process, the piece took the shape of two large interactive cube structures powered on the inside by Microsoft Kinect and providing visuals via advanced projection mapping techniques with Unity 3D as the core underlying technology.

The installation provided the audience with the means to literally “step inside” and experience a three-dimensional world built around the theme of nostalgia and the engagement of our child-like wonder of the universe to explore the possibility of digital media and technology. Users were able to fly with a flock of owls through a mountain valley, create solar flares on the surface of a star and conduct their own firework symphony in Vancouver at night.

Pixel Dreams was nominated DigiBC’s Best Student Interactive Property in 2011.

My Role

As Creative Director / Technical Artist I worked closely with other team members in evaluating technological choices, ensuring that art integration into the game engine was meeting the creative vision, programming, development of lighting and shader effects, tool development, source control, camera assets for projection mapping, rigging for animation, and the physical rigging and wiring of technical assets in the presentation space. I also built the 3D environments for the installation including: skyboxes, terrain, lighting, post-processing effects (e.g. bloom, colour correction) and various 3D assets.

What I Learned

This project brought together numerous technologies in unconventional ways. A large part of the process was evaluating these technologies and figuring out how to “hook them together” through other technologies or tools. This was my first foray into projection mapping and the Microsoft Kinect which provided unique challenges for developing the project: Kinect SDK runs on Windows whereas our projection mapping suite was Mac-based. To get around this obstacle we took advantage of SmartFox Server to build a multiplayer component into Unity that could bring the operating system gap. Restrictions often enable creative solutions.

Developing complex software backends like this shows the important of rapid prototyping and iteration – ‘hacking’ together various tools in a short sprint may be messy at first, but allows for quick evaluation of the technology and better understanding of its capabilities from both art and technical standpoints before entering full production.

Team

Matt Marshall (Creative Director / Technical Artist)

Christine Clark (Project Manager)

Lucas Huang (Lead Programmer)

Leto Yang (Lead Artist)

Vandna Sidher (Researcher / Asst. Director)

Awais Iqbal (Programmer)

This is a was a promotional reel compiled for the Cohort 5 Portfolio Showcase at the Centre for Digital Media. The reel highlights the work of our first term in Building Virtual Worlds, Visual Story and the Game Jam, celebrating the projects, culture and spirit of our class.

My Role

I directed and edited the reel over the course of a weekend and created the animated titles for the intro and outro of the video. I am currently working with many themes of distortion in much of my own work and decided to take this opportunity to explore and develop this motif in an animated video setting.

Team

Matt Marshall

Hayat Khan

This innovative concept features “wearable”, fashion-based augmented reality markers where players can literally wear their avatars and participate in a real-world augmented MMORPG that encourages social interaction and play.

The proof-of-concept was developed for iOS using ARToolworks. The characters were created with Maya. The simple mechanic of achievement unlocking was implemented for the beta test to encourage players to seek out new characters and hidden augmented reality trackers.

My Role

As Creative Director, I facilitated the team’s concept development phase, bringing focus to innovative applications of existing augmented reality technology. I was also responsible for art direction, interface design and the creation of narrative and characters, working closely with the Technical Director to ensure that art assets met technical requirements.

The proof-of-concept was developed with agile methodology in mind, creating a series of working prototypes in short time frames with weekly SCRUM-format updates for the class. As a small team, the process was highly collaborative at every stage, encouraging everyone to adapt and learn according to project requirements rather than job descriptions.

What I Learned

I learned about the artistic and technical logistics of working in augmented reality, how users interact with the technology and got a glimpse of just how far this cutting edge technology can go. This was also my first opportunity to work with and build characters with Autodesk Maya.

I also gained more experience with SCRUM and collaborating with programmers and artists in a digital media environment.

Team

Matt Marshall (Creative Director)

Christine Clark (Producer)

Craig Slagel (Technical Director)