Tuesday, March 20, 2018

GENDER ID; Registering Live Action and Interactive Animation

With every exhibit opportunity,  I attempt a new technical challenge.  These baby steps trigger new and more complex ideas and give me a sense of the technologies potential.  This was good training for the ultimate challenge of integrating the live performance with the interactive animation it generates. 

Project         Challenge                                
Lego            Playful
Try Me        Vertical capture for vertical projection
Sideshow     Interactive animation interacts with cast shadow
Gender         Activism
Monster       Inticing Entrance
Firebird       Amplify Dancers on stage


As usual, I test new ideas by myself.   At this stage, I am simply seeing if an idea is viable.  When I get promising results I schedule some time with choreographer Stephen Hues, who then communicates the story through body language.   He has used the Body Scrub device as a dancer and a choreographer and can compensate for the limits of the technology.   As a founding member of House of Pride in Montreal in the 90's he understands the complexity of gender identity and delivered a nuanced performance in 2 takes.



iPad mini camera is lined up as close as possible with Kinect depth sensor
Body Scrub's Interactive Animation  + [(Live Action shot with High-speed camera) - white background)] = Money shot!
Setting the fps to 6 for the gender icons while the live action inside them moving more smoothly at 24 fps punctuates the thesis of my film!




As I come out of the R&D bubble I learn that while we used spit and tape in our indy effort, Intel was developing similar tech. and in January released 2 RealSense Depth Cameras the D415 at $149 and D435 at $179

Use environment: Indoor/Outdoor
Depth technology:Active IR Stereo (Global Shutter)
Depth FOV (HxVxD/degrees): 91.2 x 65.5 x 100.6
Depth output resolution: 1280 x 720
RGB resolution: 1080p @ 30 fps
Maximum range: 10m+
Physical dimensions (LxDxH): 90mm x 25mm x 25mm

Although it shares a lot of specifications with its slightly cheaper sibling, the Intel Realsense D435 has a couple of interesting features that help justify its inflated price tag. Along with the standard support for 1280 x 720 depth stream output resolution at up to 90 frames per second and an RGB sensor resolution of 1080p at 30 fps, it widens the field of view considerably on the horizontal, vertical, and diagonal planes.

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The Body Scrub device is my naive effort in Volumetric Filmmaking. Learn about the history of the practice in this article by James George.