URBANSCREEN in Sydney
May 31, 2012 9:22 AM   Subscribe

Watch as some REALLY REALLY BIG PEOPLE crawl around and dance on the Sydney Opera House. Then it kinda changes colors, and then it, um... collapses.
posted by flapjax at midnite (20 comments total) 22 users marked this as a favorite
 
Nice!
posted by Renoroc at 9:28 AM on May 31, 2012


That was very cool.
posted by rtha at 9:33 AM on May 31, 2012 [1 favorite]


The Sydney Opera House is doing a bunch of neat stuff with their Vivid LIVE 2012 festival, including streaming the events live on YouTube. I'm looking forward to seeing Amon Tobin's "Live Beyond 3D 'ISAM'" show again, which is supposed to go live at 9pm AEST Saturday, June 2nd. (Current time AEST, for those counting down.)
posted by filthy light thief at 9:38 AM on May 31, 2012


The next great advances in magic will be this sort of tech. If you can convince an audience that what they see is real, you could create pretty much unlimited illusions.
posted by banished at 9:53 AM on May 31, 2012


Very cool. Gotye just got an idea for his next video.
posted by drezdn at 9:58 AM on May 31, 2012


Very nifty.

Gotta love the nuff-nuffs taking flash photos.
posted by flabdablet at 9:58 AM on May 31, 2012


Great illusion! Lovely way it made the "sails" really look like sails luffing in the wind.
posted by agatha_magatha at 10:01 AM on May 31, 2012


Any professional VJs out there care to estimate how many lumens you need on your projectors to pull that off?
posted by interim_descriptor at 10:28 AM on May 31, 2012


Ah, 3D Projection Mapping, I know someday you're going to make giant 3D Pringles chase me down a city street... but I forgive you.
posted by bpm140 at 11:04 AM on May 31, 2012 [1 favorite]


I love this. Beautiful
posted by joboe at 11:10 AM on May 31, 2012


How is it that there were people walking around during that? Walking away from that? Who could see that and not stop and watch?
posted by nushustu at 11:16 AM on May 31, 2012 [1 favorite]


One of the great triumphs in my career as a nursemaid to the arts was in bringing the video projection artist, Kelley Bell, to the giant novelty clock tower I run. When I first arrived at the Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower, I was struck by how perfect the ground glass clock faces were for rear-projection, having done a fair amount of projection work at my previous job with the American Visionary Art Museum, and I borrowed a projector to experiment with putting images and video up there. It worked even better than I'd hoped, even with a pretty small projector (I had to douse the regular backlighting, of course), but I'm not a video artist, so I sent out feelers to see if someone would be interested in using the much-loved Tower as a canvas.

Kelley was a perfect match, and she set up four projectors inside, all hooked up by a tangled skein of wires to a computer, and the results were just wonderful. We ran the installation for a month in June, and again last November, and I'm open to proposals from other artists in the field in the future. Being able to take a hundred year-old landmark and give the city a new reason to look up is a great feeling.
posted by sonascope at 11:38 AM on May 31, 2012 [1 favorite]


That was awesome. I would love to see that done with other iconic buildings - though I suspect the "collapsing" finale would not go over so well in the US.
posted by helmutdog at 11:40 AM on May 31, 2012


This page answers my question about how many lumens is required for something like this:

http://www.arkaos.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=5102

AntiVJ did projection mapping at a similar scale, using a 120,000 lumen projector.
posted by interim_descriptor at 11:44 AM on May 31, 2012


tech meets art = cool
posted by Cranberry at 12:00 PM on May 31, 2012


though I suspect the "collapsing" finale would not go over so well in the US.

You're right! We have hardly any iconic tentlike buildings that this would work with! Or is it because "we" are all "ZOMG! TERRISSTS! 9/11 -- NEVAH FORGET!!". Because we're totally like that. Especially those of us who are not so fascinated with our news channels that we'd go out and witness something artistic.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 12:26 PM on May 31, 2012


So worth it for the collapse in particular, though the whole thing is fucking brilliant.
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:54 PM on May 31, 2012


I think part of the reason it works so damn well is that you've sort of got to suspend disbelief in the first place with the building - it's just such a weird shape. By the time it starts billowing, you're sitting there going "Aha! So THAT'S what it does!". There's been projection on the Opera House before, but this was really neat.
posted by ninazer0 at 12:32 AM on June 1, 2012


How is it that there were people walking around during that? Walking away from that? Who could see that and not stop and watch?

It's not like it's Packed to the Rafters or The Voice.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 3:36 AM on June 1, 2012


I watched this pretty much just for the collapsing part. Did not disappoint. Thanks for posting, very cool!
posted by Fuego at 2:38 PM on June 2, 2012


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