Jeffrey
Shaw
2001
Computer graphic/ Video installation
PLACE-Urbanity is based on the earlier prototype of the panoramic
interactive paradigm as explored in PLACE — A User's Manual
commissioned by and premiered at Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum,
Graz, Austria in 1995. In this prototype the viewer interactively
rotated a projected image around a circular screen to explore a virtual
three-dimensional space that was constituted by an emblematic constellation
of panoramic photographic landscapes.
The new interactive video installation is based on the development
of a 360-degree digital video recording system using 16 DV video cameras
arranged in a ring and 16 DV recorders. Custom software allows these
16 simultaneous video recordings to be 'stitched' together in the
post-production to form one 'panoramic movie' which is stored and
accessed from a hard disc array.
Sixteen DV video camera cluster
In the installation the operator rotates his/her viewing window within
the 360 degree cinematic space, which plays back at 25/30 fps. Parallel
with this panoramic video recording technology, audio technology will
be developed for panoramix audio recording, which combines surround
ambient as well as discretely located sound sources. Custom software
will dynamically mix and focus these 16/32 sound tracks in conjunction
with the path of the operator's view in the virtual environment. This
new virtual landscape will be populated by cylinders of moving audio-visual
data — a constellation of cinematic events that the viewer can
visit and examine in whatever order s/he chooses. In other words, PLACE presents a
modular interactive cinema, where two kinds of spaces are conjoined
— the cinematically represented spaces, and the space of the
virtual environment in which these cinematic spaces are geographically
located.
Such a spatial conjunction also has major implications for the development
of interactive narrative structures. On the one hand there is the
set of autonomous narratives embodied in each of the panoramic video
recordings. On the other hand there is the hyper-narrative of interactive
relations and experiences that is effected by the viewer's free journey
within the virtual environment. Because this journey is, in effect,
a process of viewer control of both the 'camera' and the 'edit' of
the pre-recorded cinematic data, each performance will become a unique
event. PLACE-Urbanity will explore the possibilities of this
interactive cinematic landscape specifically in terms of urbanity,
looking for significant scenes and events in the Australian urban
fabric that become a quilt of telling relationships when conjoined
in PLACE's navigable environment.
Australian Centre For the Moving Image, March - June 2003
ZKM Center for Art and Media, Dec. 19. - January 19.2003
