WHEN
9 - 27 January 2008 | Wednesdays - Sundays | 11am - 6pm
Guided Tour 11am daily
WHERE
iCinema Centre for Interactive Cinema Research
The Scientia Building, Building G19
The University of New South Wales
Kensington (Enter via Anzac Parade)
iCinema Map
GETTING THERE
iCinema Centre at UNSW is easily accessible by public transport:
- 891 express bus from Central Station (Eddy Ave Stand D)
- 890,892 UNSW Peak hour, 392, 394, L94, 396, 397 and 399 operate along Elizabeth Street, City
- 370 from Leichhardt, Glebe, Newtown, Green Square and Coogee
- 400 from Bondi Junction, Airport, Rockdale, Burwood
- Other bus services to UNSW include 302,303,357,395 and 410
For more information on public transport to UNSW, call 131500 or click here.
Parking stations on the UNSW campus can be accessed through Barker Street Gate 14 5a-5b or through Botany Street Gate 11.
Levels 5 + 6 are for visitors. Parking tickets can be purchased at $4.00 for 5 hours. Metered street parking is also available around the University.
For map of Kensington Campus click here.
Interactive Cinema is Here
And it's blurring the boundary between audience and screen that has stood firm since cinema's dawning more than a century ago.
This new form of cinema is being pioneered with technology created by the iCinema Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, in Sydney, Australia.
In contrast to conventional cinema, where viewers passively watch a singular linear story unfold on a flat screen, iCinema’s T_Visionarium allows viewers to explore and edit a multitude of stories, in three dimensions, on a 360-degree fully surrounding screen.
"Digital media systems offer extraordinary new opportunities in terms of creative expression and experience," says iCinema's Director, Jeffrey Shaw. "Our objective is to enable people to take on innovative and critical roles in the way they engage with audiovisual media."
To achieve this, artists and engineers at the University of New South Wales have created the world's first 360 degree sterescopic projection cinema. It is AVIE, or the Advanced Visualisation and Interaction Environment. A 120-square metre circular screen surrounds the audience and provides the environment for an wholly “immersive” three-dimensional cinematic experiences. AVIE allows audiences to wander at will through the projection space without having to sit in a fixed location as in a conventional cinema, interacting with the projected information as if they are really there.
Viewers wearing three-dimensional glasses step inside a cylindrical cinema screen measuring four metres high and 10 metres in diameter. Twelve digital projectors create a high-resolution stereoscopic 3D image on this screen, and the audio is spatially enhanced via a 24- channel surround sound system.
"The underlying objective is to look at ways of integrating the physical with the digital, and to make the digital more user-friendly and relevant to the way we would like to live in the world today,” says iCinema Chairman Dennis Del Favero.
For their T_Visionarium project researchers at iCinema captured 28 hours of digital free to air Australian television over a period of one week. This footage was segmented and converted into a massive database containing over 20,000 video clips.
Each video clip was then tagged with descriptors known as metadata, which define the properties of the clip. Information can be encoded such as the gender of the actors, the dominant emotions they are expressing, the pace of the scene, and specific actions such as standing up, lying down, and telephoning. Having the video data segmented in this way deconstructs the original linear narrative into components that then become building blocks that the viewer can associate and re-assemble in an infinite number of ways.
Over three hundred video clips are simultaneously displayed and distributed around AVIE’s huge circular screen. Using a special interface the viewer can select, sort, re-arrange and link these video clips. These move about and play themselves in a virtual all-surrounding three-dimensional space that provides the viewer with an engrossing density and intensity of ever changing narrative events. “It's like an evolving digital tapestry,” says Del Favero. “Viewers who enter the space can re-thread this material in an infinite number of ways, constructing their own individual stories within the televisual universe."
T_Visionarium reveals the potential future of cinema and broadcasting by demonstrating how audiovisual data is an infinitely adaptable resource for personal creativity whether in the home, in the street or at work.
Funded by the Australian Research Council, and co-produced with the ZKM Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany, the unique way that T_Visionarium navigates and articulates vast amounts of audiovisual data is also immensely significant for the cultural, entertainment, education and industrial sectors. As the information revolution gathers pace, this ability to creatively and productively interact with information is fundamental to how we increasingly seek recreation and learning, and the way we work and do business.
Credits
Project Directors: Neil Brown, Dennis Del Favero, Jeffrey Shaw, Peter Weibel
Lead Software Engineer: Matt McGinity
Distributed Video Engine: Balint Seeber
Application Software: Jared Berghold, Ardrian Hardjono, Tim Kreger, Thi Thanh Nga Nguyen, Gunawan Herman, Multimedia and Video Communication Research Group (Dr Jack Yu), NICTA
Project Co-Ordination and Interaction Design: Jeffrey Shaw, Matt McGinity, Volker Kuchelmeister, Dennis Del Favero
Project Management: Damian Leonard, Kate Dennis, Sue Midgley
Project Assistants: David McKenzie, Caitlin Fraser, Gabriel Nervo
Audio Software: Tim Kreger
more...
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Location of the iCinema Centre
The John Niland Scientia Building
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