Thursday, November 15, 2018
See This Projection Mapping Respond to Music in Real Time
www.bizbash.com: The Los Angeles Philharmonic kicked off its 100th anniversary season on September 30 in a big way. The orchestra started the day with a free festival designed to showcase the city’s creative spirit; it stretched the eight miles between the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Hollywood Bowl and featured 1,800 musicians, artists, and dancers, plus art installations, food trucks, screen printing, and more.
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I really enjoyed watching this video because I think that media is super interested although I am not sure I would want to do it. Even so, I enjoy watching what it can do because it is still rapidly evolving and is something new and exciting to add to a show. It is nice to see it in a music venue because that is really kind of where it started in the 20th century before transitioning to theater. I think that real time is so cool because everything has to be perfect and it is not about timing its about what is happening then and there which makes it harder because it is more unpredictable. I've looked a lot at dance pieces that use real time and it always lags the tiniest bit but in music it doesn't seem to be the same. I think that is maybe because it is related to sound waves and not heat signatures.
The projection mapping done for this performance is really spectacular. The interactive nature of the projection mapping to the music is something that has been experimented with recently but to my knowledge it has never been done on such a large scale with the instant sort of feedback. It was very cool to watch the videos showing the live media mapping response and to see how effective it was. The sort of technology that makes this happen is something I’m not really familiar with but I think integrating it into entertainment and theatre certainly has the potential to make some really incredible artwork and some impactful performances. The technology is I’m sure expensive so I think as it becomes more attainable and lowers in cost we’ll see it be integrated more regularly into theatrical settings. I think the points that media are coming to technically are creating some great opportunities for creating some interactive art in the future and that media in general is quickly finding ways of enhancing the audience experience in a largely media heavy culture.
I thought these videos were really cool. With a project this ambitious, it is crucial that the end result is extremely precise and well-coordinated. Because this such an ambitious project, any small mistake would have been noticed. The performance really showcased the new technology of projection mapping and real time reactions to the music. Luckily, everything went smoothly and this resulted in a really striking end result. I think it is so amazing that this kind of technology is being developed. It has allowed for so much innovation in the world of media in theater and in the art and performance industry in general. What I find so fascinating about media is that its incorporation into performances is so new that people are just creating the most incredible things because no one has set a precedent so designers are able to experiment and create with no limitations, resulting in performances like this.
Having improvised projection cues is a very interesting concept. Although, I believe this is something that people in the sound design and light design industry have been working with for years. For example, most DJ oriented light fixtures have a built-in microphone that makes the light change on the sounds that the light fixture is hearing. Understandably, this concept is much harder to reproduce with projections and other forms of media. The videos in the article were a really cool blend of music and projections but I think the distinguishment between a click queue and live selection from the media processor is indistinguishable. Media is still a newer form of design and the technology is still rapidly evolving and developing so it is nice to see that they are working on live sound oriented visuals much like the light and sound industry has. One of my main complaints is the lack of control for a show as big as the Hollywood Bowl. Not that this type of design is lazy in any sort of way, but it does not allow for human manipulation that may be able to focus on one aspect of the orchestra instead of a computer analyzing sound waves and changing the visuals based on what it is receiving.
I think thistype of technology is the direction that live event design is heading in. Last year, I read an article that stuck with me, written by the LX and LD for the Red Hot Chili Peppers latest tour. They explained that RHCP never have an established set-list before any show, which meant that the lighting had to be on the fly, with perhaps pre-recorded cue lists for individual songs, but having to shuffle them on the fly. While the people in the article had been working with the band for a long time at that point and knew what they were doing when they were setting up their system, but for a newer LX or LD to come into that position would be disastrous. As far as I know, no lighting system is adequately equipped out of the box to receive feedback from music in real-time to change cue effects like the performance outlined in this article. Obviously these people worked very hard for months to create this design, and probably created a good bit of custom software to make it work right, a gargantuan task in its own right. I think a very good idea at this point would be to integrate this functionality directly into some of the more popular light boards.
Articles like these remind me that slowly but surely the media field is moving towards the same level as the lighting and sound in terms of what can really be done in live show settings. I think improvising media/projection cues could be a really amazing way to add to live events like concerts and similar style events, int he same way the sound and lighting improvises in the same venue. I especially love the venue at which they did this; I think the architecture of that space is amazing, and I think that all of the projection mapping brought it to life in a new and different way. I also thought they did an amazing job of really transforming the stage into various scenes, such as the Millennium Falcon, and that it creating some pretty cool visual effects that you would not have been able to create using the normal or traditional methods.
This is a very interesting idea. While I do think it does look a little underwhelming in practice, think that this technology can develop further to create something really interesting. It is interesting to see how the projections changed in order to match the music, however, not much really happened with the projections. I would argue that they were more auxiliary than the real showcase of this performance. It would be interesting to see this technology put to use on, say, a new Broadway musical. How would the projections respond to vocals as well? Would it be interesting to see a slightly different show each night? Also how would the media designer make this work? If your entire job is done for you, are you even needed? Will self-mapping projections be the end of the media designer, and the rise of the engineer? My thoughts are no, but we will see what happens.
This is so much fun! It's incredible that technology has come so far now that we can have media mapping to sound and movement onstage, and that it is being employed for events such as this. I also think that this is a great idea to pair with orchestral performances, as I worry many people in my generation are not supporting the classical music scene enough and that it is slowly dying. Not that every philharmonic can afford to employ such extensive (and, I imagine, expensive) equipment and personnel to make this a staple in every city, but the idea that young people can look at this and realize how beautiful classical music still is, drawing them in visually and communicating in a language they understand.
Additionally, I can't imagine how they did this without any rehearsal, and with only 90 minutes to map it in the space. This is incredible, and really goes to show how digital design is very much an artistic, creative art form.
I loved watching this use of media in a live event! I was amazed by the quality of the projections and it’s amazing to me that technology has advanced far enough to create light shows that move in real time in reaction to a live piece of music. It must have been nerve-wracking to have to watch the concert occur with no rehearsal, but from the article and videos it seems to have worked amazingly well! I love John Williams’ music- I played one of his Star Wars suites with an orchestra and spent the whole time marvelling at how well-composed it was and how dramatic and thrilling and beautiful it could be. What else would you expect from John Williams? I’m glad to see his music used for the debut of this group’s technology- from the video, it seems that the projections emphasized the music beautifully without being distracting or overpowering. I’m very impressed by this projection work and I hope that this kind of technology becomes widespread in live concerts, although I can understand that it had to be enormously complicated to pull off!
For the real-time performances like concerts, dramas, dances even talk shows, the most notorious and hard-fought thing is the cueing. It seems the successful performances are always more fluent and organic then the ones not. In my opinion, that is the reason why the artists are always obsessed of terms like real-time or improvisation. I was lucky that I once had chance to get my hand on one of these kind of media arts, and I was able to learn and figure out a rough understanding even I was just a run crew, not a design team member. The system is quite simple on structural, a particle generating system that has some 3-D models to guide and regulate the particles, while the configurations of the system has a series of interaction with the signals from the real-time instrument plays. The configurations were directly bind with the sound signals, which was extracted from PA console and read by the computer. And after reading the signals, system will decide the speed, size or color for the particles. The result was astonishing, I can even play any song I want to test out how will the system generated accordingly, since it was a real real-time system.
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