Bart Thomee @ LIACS: Dance Fantasia

January 2004 - June 2004

Course: Image
Team members: Marjolein Braak, Mika Igarashi and Bart Thomee
Software: MaxMSP with Jitter-plugin

Description

This project aims to create a dancing environment, where the visual, sound and motion input and output synchronize as one. The dancing atmosphere is represented in terms of natural elements: water, body and fire. Real-time video capture of dancing people combined with the beat of the music control the mixed-down video output: by dancing, the people determine which video footage is played, and their movements to the music lead to the drawing of elements on the screen. The elements change position to follow the people and change size according to the speed of the people's movements.

Scenes and Elements

- In the water scene, you draw bubbles with your body movement on top of a video footage of water. These bubbles float up, fade away into blue, blur and disappear.
- In the body scene, the after-image of your body is projected on top of a video footage of humans. This after-image fades into yellow and also blurs away.
- In the fire scene, you generate particles that have a fiery glow.

The active scene is determined by thresholds: if the people collectively move rather slow they will find themselves in the water scene, if they move faster they'll get into the body scene and if they move really fast they'll get into the fire scene.

Technicalities

Dance Fantasia largely consists of three parts:

- Object, motion and speed-of-movement detection
  using two cameras for input and MaxMSP and Jitter's built-in filters.
- Video processing and visual manipulation
  by mixing pre-shot video with dynamic element objects.
- Audio analysis and video generation
  by capturing microphone input and decomposing the signal into its frequencies, triggering specific video synthesis routines.

Ideally the video output is cast onto the walls, the ceiling and the floor, to create the optimal environment for people to feel as if they are really dancing with the elements. During our tests and the final exhibition, the projections did not interfere with the ability for the camera/software to correctly track the moving people.