Interaction & Electronic Design

“Bodyscapes_corpoPhonolux” is a multidimensional interactive installation connecting synaesthetically the visual and spatial sense with hearing.

The basic idea of this project is the translation of light into sound – to transform what we see simutaneously in an acoustic soundscape. The performer becomes “sensor” and interactive element at the same time. Along the dancer‘s body are 8 lightsensors installed, measuring steadily the various intensities and colours of light on selected points along the body surface (joints, head, etc…).

The dancer is passing through different light situations. Sensors are influenced by way and quality of movement in space, plasticity of the body and different lighting and projection ambiances by the surrounding structure. The symbiosis of movement and different lighting situations are the two equal „masters“ of the composition. As if someone is playing the piano, the dancer is playing the “space” with his body like an instrument – like an orgue of movement, with each sensor equally tuned. Finally the performance on stage becomes a 3dimensional improvisation between the lighting design and the dancer. Each gesture can be heard. One major factor is the spatial distribution of loudspeakers in a 360° area around the spectator. Each sensor is directly linked to one loudspeaker, so the acoustic output of each single sensor can be directly assigned within space for the spectator. Therefore the soundscape becomes a direct acoustic illustration of the body’s surface in space.

Idea/Choreography/Performance: Veronika Mayerböck Sound/Composition: Noid IT/Multimedia:Simon Laburda Photocredits: Konstanze Mayerböck, Monika Perner

We were contracted by Areus Engineering to develop a control system for a passive LED matrix of up to 768 white LEDs (48x16 pixels). The LED-matrix was attached to a scale model of the prototype for a Maybach car. The idea of Michal Plata was to make the car sort of invisible by recording video from one side with a webcam and projecting it to the other side. (If you've seen the James Bond movie "Die Another Day", you'll know what I mean ;) ). "sort of invisible" because of course with blocky 48x16 pixels and no colors you could never do an accurate representation....

The LED control-system should be able to receive pixeldata from an attached PC and do 16 shades of gray. With this configuration our system managed to display 15fps with a refresh rate of up to 100Hz. The pixeldata came from a webcam attached to a Linux Netbook. On this computer the image was scaled an dedistorted using OpenCV and transferred to the LED-screen using ledbridge.

The controller had to drive the 15mA rated LEDs at 240mA to achieve the full brightness while scanning through the 16 rows, yet never stop scanning the matrix because that would burn out the LEDs instantly! Achieving the high frame- and refresh-rate with the ATMega32 was a difficult task, I had to think of an optimized framebuffer layout to decode the incoming pixeldata to in order to achieve the high refresh rate. Also I had to use assembler because with C the required performance just can't be reached.

Video ´the invisible Maybach´ by Michal Plata, 2010