http://oslolux.wordpress.com/
Ståle Stenslie started the day with an overview of ideas around making the invisible visible. This involved tracing the history of light painting with it’s early roots in the work of Man Ray signing his name using a light stick and followed through to more industrial documentary photographic processes.
The baton was picked up by Timo Arnall (http://www.elasticspace.com/) who described projects that made use of tablet typography in public spaces. Further research projects involved visual mapping of RFID and wifi networks and overlaying this data with the overall aim of informing design processes.
Stig Skjelvik’s Dobpler which is on permanent exhibition at the school has developed into a range of incarnations internationally (http://nullohm.com/). The core of this responsive system is a simple circuit comprised of a light sensor and LED which, when constructed into mirroring grids, have been used to illuminate public spaces to create work that is driven by human presence.
Anthony Rowe and Chris Bennewith of Squid Soup (http://squidsoup.org/) took the audience on a retrospective journey of their trans-national working processes. From the Glowing Pathfinder Bugs project that started as a sandpit project with virtual bugs integrating of virtual and physical spaces, we were introduced to the Ocean of Light reactive audio-visual sculpture with it’s 3500 pairs of sound and motion sensitive circuits.
The Senseable City Lab at MIT was represented by Adam Pruden (http://senseable.mit.edu/) who introduced the concept of “detached” messages, defined as a message that is floating in the air and removed from a substrate such as smoke signals, fireworks, aerial advertisements and 3D cinema This was by way of introducing his current project that utilizes bespoke firefly micro helicopters fitted with an led in ping pong sized capsule in order to create swarms of remotely controlled flying pixels
United Visual Artists (www.uva.co.uk) provided the first keynote address courtesy of Ben Kreukniet who took the audience on a tour of projects that used light to communicate – from their partnership with Massive Attack which used projected concert projections to draw the audience in to fashion shows that used light to create a wall between the catwalk and the audience. The presentation also touched on the d3 software used – written in house to control lighting design and commercially available for bands to create their own concert lighting.
H C Gilje (http://www.bek.no/~hc/switchboard.html) presented documentation of his theatre and installation work which makes use of sequenced single light sources to create the illusion of movement along with synchronized sound in order to enhance sense of solidity to light. An interesting by-product of his creative work is the dynamic projection shareware software VPT for theatre and installation created in MaxMsp/Jjitter (Downloadable here http://hcgilje.wordpress.com/VPT/ )
Birger Sevaldson (http://www.birger-sevaldson.no/) and Natasha Barrett (http://www.natashabarrett.org/), curator and freelance musician, explored the development of their low budget, low tech immersive sound and light installation Barely. The piece explored the split between high frequent and low frequency and different refractive properties to mimic the effect of light moving through space and made effective use of black paint and UV paint on polycarbonate sheeting to create an impressive looking piece.
Marius Watz (http://www.generatorx.no/) for his presentation “some quick thoughts on images light and pixels” traced the history of multimedia from its roots in painting and sculpture through to the dynamic screens of Times Square (more pixels at bottom than at top using perceptual difference and budget – similar to trompe l’oeil of frescoed chapel ceilings).
For the second and final keynote address Antivj (http://www.antivj.com/), Joshua Lemercier and Simon Geifus described the development of audio-visual work created under their label from early experiments projecting onto mosquito netting to their more recent work that incorporates state of the art projection mapping.
Images from accompanying exhibition:
Dobpler – Stig Skjelvik
“Ocean of Light“ – Squidsoup
- Marius Watz
- AntiVJ
- HC Gilje
Grand Lantern Finale!
