A&D IP Student Media Projects

Met with most of the students (7 out of 11-12) doing video/audio projects for their IP (Integrative Project) projects.  This is the capstone project for undergraduates, meant to synthesize all they have learned as an Art & Design undergraduate.  From the A&D website:

"In the 12-credit Integrative Project, seniors use the techniques, concepts and skills they've learned to plan, conceptualize, and build a single project of their choosing over the course of their final year. With the help of faculty advisors, they manage their own creative process and working schedules, and work in their own dedicated studio space. The project culminates in a final presentation where the student engages the public through exhibition, publication or performance, and is documented in a written thesis, website, and digital portfolio."

These media projects are screened at the MichiganTheater at the end of the term.  I have been working with other A&D faculty since they started these screenings at the MTF a few years back, but this year David Chung, who has been taking the lead on organizing the screening, is at Harvard for the term and asked if I would work with Michael Rodemer to make sure the students get a good start, stay on track, and have the appropriate files for the screening.  And then make sure it all goes smoothly the night of the screening.  There is to be another screening the next week at the Stamps auditorium in the Walgreen Drama Center.  Both are open to the public, and I will be sending out times & dates as they get closer.

I posted 2 documents focused on those ideas for the students to look at in my Dropbox folder:

Thoughts on Maintaining Your Sanity

Digital Movie Format Guidelines

Most of the students have significant experience in doing what they are doing, so this meeting and the docs are mostly to get on the same page, to let them know about the resources at the DMC they may not know about, and to be introduced to me as someone they can consult about any aspects of their projects.

One student is doing an audio only project, and we talked a bit after the meeting.  She is now going to be using 1180 (Video conferencing suite) to record a small group of people having a conversation.  I'm going to help her get the right mics, etc for the job.

Another student stopped by after the meeting to talk about creating a video of the pop-up book she is making.  I actually did this some years ago with an Art grad student named Susan Skarsgard.  She is the person that planted all the daffodils in the Arb as one of her art projects.  One of the videos is a small sample in 3D.  We made them to try to get the University to have this done to the entire collection that had just been donated, but they didn't want to do it.  You can see the "flat" version here and a sample of the 3D version here.  The 3D movie was a challenge to get into YouTube.  It ended up squashed a bit.  You'll also need typical Red/Cyan glasses to see it in 3D.

-t

MLK Day at the Detroit Center

For a number of years I have been connecting UM's Detroit Center with the MLK Day keynote speech from Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor.  I also sometimes do other streams in the afternoon from the Union Ballroom.

I make this connection using the Detroit Center's two Lifesize High Definition video conferencing systems, one of which I keep in Ann Arbor for just such event connections.  It creates an HD 1280 x 720 link between the two locations.

In order to make the experience seem more like "you are there" I put the camera in a seat in the Hill audience. Here is a photo taken a few years ago that shows what it looks like.

You can see that it looks quite good, which is what you would expect from a high definition camera.  This year, though, we had a problem.

When I made a test connection on Jan. 10 in preparation for the Jan. 21 event I discovered that the camera in Detroit was not behaving.  Here is what it looked like.

It was all green and noisy, and instead of being 1280 x 720 it was something like 632 x 420.  Here is a screen shot of the Detroit camera and the local camera side by side, taken from the web portal that lets you control these units remotely.

Even though the image on the right isn't great, you can see the difference.

I contacted Lifesize support and the guy I spoke with had connected to it he said he'd never seen anything like it.  He talked to another tech who said they had seen it a few times and in a couple of instances upgrading to the latest software patch fixed it.  I did that, but no luck.

Lifesize is overnighting a replacement camera.  Stand by for updates, and a bit more info about the setup at Hill.

Migration project at the Institute for the Humanities

Richard Barnes is creating a media installation in the gallery at the HI.  You can see more about who he is at these links: Richard's site and the National Geographic bio.  The Geographic bio might be a better starting point.

I have been consulting with Richard and Amanda Krugliak, Curator at the HI, on how to best outfit the gallery there for his work.  Known more for his still photography, this exhibit includes video he took along the US-Mexico border, along with various physical artifacts he picked up along the way.  We have been testing large (55") LED flat displays as well as different projection options.

I'll keep you posted on the final result, or maybe see you at the opening on January 24, 2013.

Institute link about Richard's exhibit and the events around it is here.

-t

Melanie Manos Gallery consult

I talked with Melanie Manos, A&D faculty, about a gallery installation she is going to be doing in January at the Public Pool Gallery in Hamtramck, based on her piece for DLECTRICITY in Detroit on Oct. 5 & 6, 2012.

She shot some green screen footage in the DMC Video studio of her crawling across the floor with the intention of making it look like she was climbing a wall.  She had mapped out the real wall in Detroit onto which she was going to project her final footage and noted various real features like windows, ledges, etc.  These wer all marked out on the green floor when she shot her footage so that, when projected on the real wall, it would be more convincing as she moved around these real features.

For the gallery show, she wants to use old CRT TV's, probably of several sizes, and hoping to synchronize 4 DVD players to feed them.  I explained that it is actually pretty difficult and/or expensive to do that  and suggested using solid state media players, or possibly a couple of computers.  She is pondering her options.



As she had shot her footage as a climb, she was thinking of stacking them to make her movement vertical.  Given that the bezels of the TVs would provide a bit of a buffer zone between them, the sync could be within a frame or so and still work.  I suggested that she might think of it differently: what if she were to space the monitors far - or farther - apart in the gallery?  She could calculate the time it would take her to get from one to the other if she kept moving and time her 4 parts accordingly, giving the impression that she was moving through an invisible dimension that we could only see parts of through the 'windows' of her monitors.  She liked the idea of playing around with that, and we talked about a few installation details required by one or another version of her setup.  I expect to hear back from her again.

Hologram Projector project

I've been working with Eric Maslowski of the UM 3D Lab to see if we can resurrect a Hologram projector that is currently in the Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments.

"What?" I hear you say. Here's the story.

This was born from an encounter between an Engineering professor (Juris Upanieks) and a Music Education professor (William Malm) at a party inaround 1970.  The Engineer was talking about this cool new technology called holography and the Music Guy immediately thought that this could be a great tool for teaching.  Rare instruments could be displayed to an entire class at once, in full 3D.

This was developed out at Willow Run Airport.  The university operated Willow Run Laboratories (WRL) from 1946 to 1972. WRL housed a number of physicists and engineers and produced many innovations, including the first ruby laser and work on holography.

In order to capture a full 360 degree view of each object, they built a black box big enough to accomodate the instruments they wanted to capture - maybe about 6' square.  They used rolls of film originally made for aerial surveillance photos, about 14" wide and in long rolls.  They ran the film around the length of interior of their black box, with the instrument in the middle, and through an aperture in one of the walls exposed the film with a laser.  Once developed, this film could be run through the hologram projector to show the instrument rotating 360 degrees at will.

Basically, it was a monochromatic holographic QTVR movie.  But this was in the early 1970's, and it was totally rockin' for that time.  The Bill Malm said that when they demonstrated it to a group of engineers the Rackham amphitheater at that time, they all gasped as one.  Pretty rewarding reaction from a bunch of jaded skeptics.

So the Stearns collection got it because it was images of some of their musical instruments.  But they have now decided that they would like to be rid of it, which is why they contacted the UM 3D Lab.  And why Eric,knowing my interest in these kind of things, contacted me.

Below are a few photos. the first one Eric took during his initial visit to the Stearns Collection to see this thing.  We hope to make a return visit soon, and I'll post about that visit.  The other two are from the UM press in the 70's and show the projector in operation.

-t

Holographic film description of a Japanese string instrument and a Malaysian double reed.

At the bottom you can see the label for the "Film Drive" to rotate the object.

And yes, there were also tape recordings of the sound made by these instruments.
(You can see the "Sound" label in the lower right.)

The viewer was able to select which tape loop they wanted to hear.

 The projector set up.  The laser is in the back and the film spool can be seen in the center foreground.

William Malm and Juris Upanieks are pictured.

 Bill viewing one of the films with the alternate "personal viewing" arrangement.

You can see the pegs and head of the holographic instrument through the glass.

2012: Janet Maylie's Acting for the Camera Studio

I've been working with Janet Maylie at the School of Music, Theater and Dance for a few years.  I initially did the final installation of a video system for the Acting for the Camera TV studio as the Walgreen Drama Center was first opening up.  Since then I have worked with Janet to enable her to post her students' video clips on CTools, and to assist her, as she has become more comfortable with the technology, to move into doing multi-camera shoots.

The system as delivered to the Walgreen Center was based around a Sony AnyCast like the one in the photo.

Video files were recorded to an external drive, which had to be formatted as EXT3, a UNIX format.  We had to install special drivers on Janet's iMac so she could read the drive and copy files to her desktop.  That setup would sometimes get flaky for her, too.

The Sony cameras were decent enough, with CCUs and studio packs for remote focus & zoom and a top-mounted monitor.  And decent studio tripods with wheels.

Most recently, I've been consulting with Janet and the department Chair about what it would take to move the studio up into High Definition.  They decided to take the first step in that direction this week by purchasing a 55" Samsung LED flat screen display to replace the 42" Sony CRT they have been using.

I made sure they understood that the big CRT, while seeming like a technological dinosaur, was still the very best tool for watching the video clips they are creating in their Standard Def NTSC studio.  Playing those clips back on a display that is optimized for HDTV content means they will look different - and possibly not as good.  They are OK with trying it out, and if Janet really does not like how they look they can continue to use the big CRT until they do upgrade to HD.  The flat panel is VERY easy to store.

This purchase of a flat screen ultimately led to an entire upgrade to take the studio to HD, although Janet did go back to her CRT until the HD move happened.  TEL Systems of Ann Arbor provided the equipment and integration, with close consultation from me.

It includes:

• 1 Roland VR-4HD Multi-Format AV mixer 
• 1 Panasonic AG-UMR10 Recorder and SD cards
• 3 Panasonic AJPX270 Camcorder with Lens 

The beauty of this system is that the recorder puts the files right onto an SD card, and it also has SDI in & out.  The Roland AV mixer outputs SDI, and the output of the recorder gets changed to HDMI to feed the large flat panel display.

The Roland mixer handles the audio as well as the video, just like the Sony AnyCast did, so it is a familiar interface for Janet to use.

The big screen is supplemented by a set of Leon speakers, directly wired into it in place off its internal speakers.

And the whole system is built into a podium and so has a small footprint.  It all slides easily in and out of the storage closet in the studio.

Here is what Janet had to say when I interviewed her about the creating the final system.

-t

3D gallery projection

Today I did some tests with SAC faculty member Chris McNamara.
http://www.lsa.umich.edu/sac/people/ci.mcnamarachristopher_ci.detail

He is going to be setting up a gallery installation that requires 3 3D projection systems, so we have been looking at finding the sweet spot for price & performance when buying 6 projectors.

Playback of his 3D material was from 2 Technovision DV75N solid state media players.  They connect via ethernet and achieve rock solid sync, which is necessary for 3D material.

I've also used the AKMAN AMA 1080P, but their sync is only close - within a frame or two.

Today we tested 2 Viewsonic PJD6531w projectors.  They are 1280 x 800 (WXGA) and 3000 lumens.  They handled his 1080p material very well and looked pretty good.  The best part?  They cost under $800.

They have 2 VGA inputs with loop through for video and audio,as well as composite & S video, and and HDMI inputs.

Chris is going to see if he can get the gallery to spend the money for projectors that are 3500 lumens - and cost about $1400 each.  Quite a premium for 500 lumens, as all the other features are comparable.  These are the Mitsubishi WD570.

Well, we'll see what happens.

-t