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Arts & Technology

Hummingbird - October 29, 2002

“The single most stunning marriage of art and technology that I have seen in my 17 years of working in information technology.”
--- Ann Doyle, Program Manager of Arts & Humanities for the Internet2 Consortium

On Tuesday, October 29, 2002, two people, 2000 miles apart, performed together on stage. One performer was on stage in the flesh in front of an audience. The second performer stood in a motion capture studio, 2000 miles away, in front of an array of infrared motion capture sensors. The second performer’s movements were recreated in real time on stage by a fully articulated animated avatar; an avatar capable of morphing from one shape to another as the performance progressed. The avatar was projected on a custom silver sharktooth scrim, in what Ella Thompson (co-artistic director of the Internet2 performance event) described as “stellar use of layers of light, revealing a subtle local dancer in stage light under the luminescent projected avatar.” Dancing to the piece “All my hummingbirds have alibis” by Morton Subotnick, the performers danced over, under, and through one another. The live performer alternately jumped over the virtual performer, or, at will, passed through her, as if passing through a ghost on stage. The piece was called “Hummingbird.”
The piece was possible because of a unique combination of motion capture, real-time internet-enabled computer animation software, custom middleware, and internet2 data transmission (40 Mbps uncompressed stream using the UIUC Integrated Systems Lab 's Syzygy custom middleware system, and an additional high-bandwidth MPEG-2 video stream): technologies that we will refer to collectively as Hummingbird technology.

Technology development and staging of this piece were supported by the Beckman Institute and by the Kyoto Computer Gakuin in Kyoto, Japan.

The video document of this performance was the official selection of SIGGRAPH 2003

Click below to see:
L.A.Times Article
News-Gazette Article
ISL web page on the performance (more photos)
Internet2 web page (at this site, you'll be able to see the video of the performance)
SIGGRAPH 2003 site <http://www.siggraph.org/artdesign/gallery/S03/video/0459.html>

November Playhouse - November, 2000

In November, 2000, at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts in Urbana, we tested the idea that a dancer can dance with her own future self. One of the dancers who performed in the July 2000 demonstration organized and choreographed a piece in which she danced with herself. We recorded 3D images of herself dancing one half of the piece. On the night of the live performance, “dancer of the present” performed the second half of the piece live, while “dancer of the past” was re-created in three-dimensional display mode on a huge backdrop behind the stage.

Click below to watch the show (QuickTime Movies)
November Playhouse

iGrid 2000 - July, 2000

In July , 2000, we organized a group of dancers and martial artists to put on a continuous two-hour performance in Urbana, Illinois, from midnight until 2 AM Urbana time. The dancers and martial artists were filmed using the 64-camera Argus array, and the images were transmitted over the internet to Yokohama. Audience members in Japan watched the performance in 3D in two settings: an “Immersadesk” three-walled virtual reality display system, and a “CAVE” six-sided 3D virtual reality environment. Viewers were able to take turns adjusting the position and angle of the 3D viewport.

Click below to see:
iGrid 2000
CAVE
Click below to watch the movies (QuickTime Movies)
Documentary Film
A mini-film to show how Argus is put together.

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