Sarah Kenderdine, Jeffrey Shaw, John Gollings, Paul Doornbusch
with Dr L Subramaniam, John Fritz, Doron Kipen, George Michell, Paprikaas Animation Studio, Archaeological Survey of India, iCinema Centre for Interactive Cinema Research, Museum Victoria, ZKM Karlsruhe.
2006
Interactive Installation
PLACE-Hampi is a vibrant theatre for embodied participation
in the drama of Hindu mythology set into a real-world landscape. PLACE-Hampi
provides the setting for a stereographic virtual landscape, populated
by sixteen cylinders enclosing a constellation of cinematic events
in which the audience can participate, traverse and examine at will.
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Hampi stereoscopic panorama |
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It is a modular interactive cinema where three kinds of narrative
spaces are conjoined: The cylinders comprise augmented high resolution
stereoscopic panoramas that present the most significant archaeological,
historical, and sacred locations at the site of the World Heritage
of Vijayanagar in Hampi, southern India. Conjoined within this rich
scenery are lively narrative events, enacted by computer graphic characters,
based on the mythologies specific to the site
that have been composited into the three dimensional landscapes.
The scripted narrative animations are latent events that come to life
when the operator of the interface focuses attention on particular
features within the panoramic scene.
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Hampi operated using platform-module |
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In addition, the visual landscape is contained within a spatial aural
field (the third space) made from decoded ambisonic 360 degree recordings,
enlivened by composition brought about by the audience’s activities and played back in real-time.
This real-time interactive rendering and delivery system
will use sophisticated mapping and transformation strategies as the
user controls and navigates the space, to deliver a sonic experience,
which is intimately and deeply connected with the visually presented
and augmented space. This articulates an unprecedented level of viewer
co-presence in the narrative exploration of a virtual cultural landscape.
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Hampi stereoscopic panorama |
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The panoramic cylinders are accurately positioned on the data terrain
model (DEM) that overlays a diagram of the sharira-mandala used for
the placement of buildings at Hampi, through which the operator makes
a journey. The user-interface’s screen shows a bird’s-eye
view of this virtual environment, centred on the viewer’s changing
location. A microphone incorporated into this interface picks
up any sound that the viewer makes and causes the release of continuously
moving 3D words and sentences within the projected scene (English
and Sanskrit initially). The texts themselves are quotations from
the Hindu ascetic Alvars to provide a further level of narrative articulation
to the animated events that are located within each of the panoramas.
PLACE-Hampi provides a framework for a new approach to the
rendering of the cultural experience, whose aesthetic and representational
features gives the general public a dramatic new appreciation of the
many layered significations of such historical, archaeological, and
architectural spaces. While PLACE-Hampi embodies a single user interaction
model, the autonomous narrative scenarios that populate each of the
panoramic scenes with mythological significance become endowed with
the emergent narrative relations that are generated by each viewer's
interactive exploration of this virtual environment which are also
available to the total audience simultaneously present (maximum 30
people). The work, as defined above, is considered at the forefront
of international developments of virtual environments and the complex
arrangement of technical and aesthetic parameters that are required
to develop them.
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Hampi stereoscopic image with embedded 3D character |
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PLACE-Hampi is highly significant for promoting dialogues
of engagement embedded in the imagery of a cultural landscape and
activating the knowledge contained there. Hampi today continues to
be an active pilgrim site, not simply an historic place. Each day
its landscape and temples are activated through various rituals and
tapas specific to time, place and to discrete locations in the complex.
As part of a living tradition, the interpretation of the site by pilgrims
is in a constant state of re-definition within the broad tenants of
Hinduism. A conversation takes
place between mythological characters and the sacred objects/sites/natural
features permeated with the contemporary “folkloric imagination”
of the pilgrims .
Hindi priests and pilgrims are not the only ones to enliven these
Hindu images and temples. Bringing with them different religious assumptions,
political agendas and economic motivations, others may animate the
same objects or sovereignty as polytheistic “idols”, as
“devils” as potentially lucrative commodities, as objects
of sculptural art, as archaeological and historical relics, or attribute
to them meanings and associations never foreseen by the image maker
or votary. As Davies points out “the location of an object
plays a constitutive role in the act of looking” in addition to this appropriation,
relocation and redisplay of an object will dramatically alter its
significance for new audiences. The frame of reference or dispensation
designates the historically grounded and socially shared understandings
of systems. PLACE- Hampi reconstitutes the landscape for these
interpretations of mythological narratives in the form of co-presence,
enabling a new mode of interpretation accessible for diverse cultural
audiences.
Credits
Concept and Project Directors: Sarah Kenderdine, Jeffrey Shaw
Photography: John Gollings, Sarah Kenderdine, Jeffrey Shaw
Audio Design and Composition: Paul Doornbusch
Audio Recording: Paul Doornbusch, Dr L Subramaniam, Doron Kipen
Computer Graphic Design and Animation: Paprikaas Animation Studio Pty Ltd Bangalore
Stereoscopy Facilitator: Paul Bourke
Application Software: Adolf Mathias
Place Design and Engineering: Jeffrey Shaw, Huib Nelissen
Archaeological Advisors and Facilitators: George Michell, John Fritz, Archaeological Survey of India
Dance and MOCAP: Lingalayam Dance Company, Sina Azad
Commissioned by Lille3000, it forms part of an Australian Research Council Linkage Project, with major support from Museum Victoria, Epidemic, Paris, ZKM Karlsruhe, Gollings Pidgeon, and Music and Effects.
PLACE-Hampi will premier in the Lille Opera at the Lille
3000 Festival, October 14th. 2006 to January 14th. 2007 (www.lille3000.com)
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Panoramic stereo camera on location |
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