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refleXions of Clara Venice

Back in September we met up with our colourful friend Clara Venice to give her a personal tour of the Funhouse Underwater Ballroom. We invited her to explore the scene, where she could play with all the interactive projection mapping elements while we discussed possibilities of using reflexion visuals in her show. 
For those who don’t know Clara Venice, I’d described her as the best theremin player I know of – a talented young musician sporting a sweet Holographic Pop Vocalist look and electro sound with wonderfully written melodies and lyrics filled with catchy hooks that you won’t soon forget. In Clara’s words “I control frequencies with my mind” and that she does, emulating the slight of hand magic that audiences witness during her live shows. Clara also actively advocates for her instrument and has created a cool series of demonstration videos and cover songs showcasing the Theremin… the only musical instrument you play without touching. 
You can check out all of her music and other fun posts on her insta.. @claravenice or website www.claravenice.com

We met Clara earlier this year when she was performing at The Funhouse where we really enjoyed the music and was wowed by that theremin performance so we figured it was a great fit to have her play at the refleXion_visuals launch party. It so happens that she has performed around the world, recently touring Japan and performing for some of the biggest tech company corporate events spending a lot of time between LA and hometown Toronto. So we were lucky to have her play our launch party and It’s been a joy to work with her. I was impressed by Clara’s technical knowledge and how she is already using creative projection effects and crowd interaction ideas in her shows. We naturally began discussing possibilities of adding refleXion visuals into her performance. Leveraging our Interactive projection mapping and AR tools could help engage the audience and tell her live show story in a more dynamic and exciting way by giving her fans new ways to interact and experience the show.
On this special day with Clara we brought our photographer Andrija Dimitrijević of AD Photografe with us to capture Clara exploring the immersive Underwater Ballroom and interacting with our augmented reality projection world.
Thanks so much Clara for your interest in refleXion visuals and for sharing your wonderful talents with us. Please enjoy Clara’s augmented underwater Adventure with us in the gallery below…

Article by : Scott VJ Guy (LVA founder and director)
The Funhouse Toronto created by : @mondoforma
Photo Credits : AD Photografe
No unauthorized usage

  • Clara playing her moog Theremin at the refleXion launch event.
  • Making friends with the locals.
  • Daydreaming underwater.
  • Start with the AR selfie.
  • Time to explore
  • What do we have here? Clara wearing the matching Underwater Ballroom T Shirt !
  • so curious..
  • Exploring the magical details in the Funhouse Ballroom.
  • What did you find?
  • Sea Dragons swim by attracted by her presence
  • Secrets are revealed in the AR ap by finding and tapping 3D objects
  • Is it a pearl ?
  • Interact with the augmented world in a multitude of ways
  • Record a GIF and share your AR discoveries
  • interactive AR fish can be triggered to enter the projection world.
  • Look Mixed new media art !
  • Mer people sculptures by Alana Kindrie
  • What’s he doing now?
  • Vj Guy gets in on the hunt for treasures
  • Discovering his own secrets of the deep
  • motion sensors trigger our giant octo to jump out and say hi
  • Deep contemplation
  • Wow that was fun! See you next time 🙂
  • Thank you Clara for blessing our launch party with your music

Photo Credit : AD Photografe
No unauthorized usage

If you want to learn more about our refleXion 360 Augmented reality projection systems like the one that powered The Funhouse this year you can visit the developer page for refleXion or watch for more blog posts from livevideoart.ca
Show some support for the blog and livevideoart community by following and sharing our posts from @livevideoart & @reflexion_visuals

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refleXion launch After Movie and gallery

Video created by @mareks.petersons of @farneardesigns

Sending a big thank you out to everyone who attended our refleXion launch event back in September @TheFunhouseToronto .
This summer Livevideoart has been a proud partner at The Funhouse a Pop Up experiential art maze and event venue Just off Queen St. in Toronto. Inside this hyper creative interactive art maze we worked with set artists to create the Underwater Ballroom and other projection illusions.
Our LVA mediaserver and the new RefleXion Spatial Augmented Reality tools were installed and customized to bring a real time interactive projection world to life and entertain guests. This fully automated and interactive environmental system is a milestone in the world of live show control, projection mapping and augmented reality and a big achievement for our little shop and dev team at www.wackmonster.com
Thanks 1000000 to our special guest entertainment for the night @claravenice and @_planetb_ for sharing their live performances and original music with us. Check back for the next LVA blog for a post all about our sparkly friend Clara.

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refleXion news release

At LVA and Wack Monster Interactive We are really excited to launch our new services and software tools into the world this Summer and fall at The Funhouse Toronto . We officially dropped this press release about a month ago and invited a bunch of tech heads and experience creators to come to Funhouse and see what we are up to.

For immediate release: August 19, 2019 

Media Advisory

New Spatial Augmented Reality System Enters Toronto Tech Stream

Launching this month, refleXion, brings its unique visual display technology to the city’s latest pop-up event space

Toronto, ONT, 08/19/2019 — There must be something in the water. How else can you explain the magical visual-effects on display at Toronto’s Funhouse? Deep under the surface of the pop-up venue’s 3rd floor Underwater Ballroom lies a new innovation in multi user visual technology. 
Designed as a tool suite and control system for show designers, artists, marketers and moment-makers, refleXion is launching as a spatial augmented reality experience that enables real-time customization of event visuals like projection mapping, LED displays and lighting systems. The applications are as endless as the ocean is blue – from interactive concerts to live presentations, pre-set visual activations or cumulatively generated curations – the goal is to have a completely unique user-influenced experience with multiple points of interaction to explore. The reactions are environment-based and evolve and project in real-time on immersive visual surfaces. 

With collective backgrounds in UX design, software/game development, digital art and live production, partners Scott Guy and David Boon of Wack Monster Interactive have created the refleXion system out of their desire to enable easy, interesting ways to animate visual experiences. Interacting with 3D-graphics in real-time offers an advanced sense of connectivity between the audience and the live show. Scott, also founder of LiveVideoArt (LVA), a full-service event-visuals and system-controls partner, knows the limitations of current market offerings first-hand.

“As an end-user, the goal was to have a creative 3D tool suite for building reactive visuals and offer complete control of the scene in real-time with an easy to use interface – it’s an empowering way to take your control system to the next level without re-inventing the wheel for every unique application,” says Scott.

LVA, in partnership with Wack Monster, has deployed refleXion to the public for their latest project in creating a 360° ‘Underwater Ballroom’ at The Funhouse Toronto. The space is setup with AR projection-mapping capabilities, interactive elements, music automation and motion-activated scene changes, powered by a custom media server system. refleXion is the AI feuling the animations housed-within, the brains behind the crowd-reactive deep-sea environment. The scenes are filled with schools of fish, seahorses and manta rays, fully-automated with motions that never repeat. Each scene and moment is as unique as the audience witnessing it, and they are encouraged to participate, explore and be surprised with what they uncover along the way. 

“The Funhouse is where refleXion truly came to life, where it really began to swim with an intended ‘mind-of-its-own’. The real-time capabilities of this software allow the visual elements to act independently or be influenced by multiple users. It also gives control to a single-user or the whole audience, depending on your desired result. It reacts to a custom combination of sound, motion, environmental elements and other-users, so it becomes a living world open for each person to discover.”

refleXion is on display at The Funhouse, 101 Lisgar St, during regular operating hours, 3rd floor in the Underwater Ballroom. A special invite-only software launch party will be held September 18, 2019 at The Funhouse. There, creators Scott and David will present key features, entertain with live demos, discuss development and have a Q & A followed by an interactive performance. 

For an invite or for interviews, write to info@livevideoart.com  

About Wack Monster Interactive (WMI):

Founded by creative technologists Scott Guy and David Boon, WMI is a Toronto start-up creating interactive 3D software, games and tools for spatial augmented reality. 

About LiveVideoArt (LVA):

Servicing the entertainment, marketing and tech sectors, LVA designs live visual experiences and builds media server configurations and show-control systems to power high-end projects including multi-projection mapping displays.

PR Contact:

Mandy Leon

mandy@livevideoart.com 

416-317-8715

Online version – 
https://www.prlog.org/12784894-new-spatial-augmented-reality-system-enters-toronto-tech-stream.html

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Adidas time warp with Jam3

Award winning international digital design and production agency Jam3 brought us on board for some amazing projects over the years. Livevideoart is very proud to assist this highly creative and ambitious team and realize some special flagship projects like these two for adidas Originals. We worked with Jam3 team to create powerful interactive immersive experiences around the drop of their latest shoes like the Predator and the newly updated Ozweego.
The Ozweego future of style update and shoe giveaway on August 8th in NYC was a very detailed project with an AR projection system at its core, seamlessly integrated with the set design. The visual concepts were strong and Jam3 delivered amazing content to work with. The whole thing wrapped in a careful social media campaign/free shoe giveaway and it was a big success.
From street side POP Up giveaway in NEW York city to a mobile shipping container deployed in LA and Toronto for the M.L.S cup we are excited to be building augmented reality interactive projection mapping experiences everywhere we go.
Jam3 has been an excellent partner pushing the development of real time projection mapping systems and high quality tech driven experiences like Ozweego project and the Predator experience 2017/18 where we installed a projection mapping media server and installed a floor to ceiling wrap around projection cave into a shipping container. See the case study video by Jam3 and the levels of detail that go into these high end spatial augmented reality experiences.

There are so many possibilities in the experiential marketing sector and we are always pushing the possibilities of what can be done for brands and of course entertainment experiences as well.

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The Funhouse is back and about to open June 1st

LIVEVIDEOART is proud to be a big part of The Funhouse Toronto brought to you by Mondo Forma inc. The whole team involved is working overtime and really excited for our upcoming launch Saturday June 1st.
The Funhouse is a walk through exploration exhibit of otherworldly fully immersive art installations and a trip into another dimension that showcases many Toronto artists’ creativity and use of new media technology.

In partnership with Universal music Canada , we are featuring musicians from the label as inspiration to the art rooms, creating visions of the individual artists’ music in tangible form, a feast for the eyes that is drawn from the musicians’ styles.

Spanning the full 3 floors of a custom renovated venue and event space-turned-underwater psychedelic ballroom, that we augmented with a fully immersive smart digital projection environment.
In 2018 we were brought in to add projection mapping illusions to some of the scenes within this massive ARTstravaganza.
After a year of delays beyond our control the project is back for 2019 and all set to open on June 1st. We are really happy we stuck with it and have to send a huge thanks to Mondo Forma inc for making it work out. Mondo Forma is a group of young and creative Toronto entrepreneurs who may be best known for the previous project The House of VR on Queen St. in Toronto. I first met with the team when I took part in a HOVR special event for Nuit Blanche 2017 and we foreshadowed a future of collaborating on something bigger . Well this is the something bigger and with the new location + all the amazing work that gone in  from a huge group of co-creators we are set to launch something even more incredible than I had dreamed and it’s all about the art made for Toronto by Toronto.

As Digital Media Co Lead I am designing and installing the projection mapping systems and animated content. Collaborating with LED lighting lead Nathan Wilford  and Aaron an old friend from Solstice Festival days as electrician in lighting the space and integrating projections and creative vfx over some amazing set pieces built by the production build team Manual Arts and the massive art/design team.

Rigging and testing projectors

We are deploying multiple projection and smart lighting systems to enhance the spaces created in collaborations with a deeply talented group of set designers and artists of different styles and mediums all guided by the high level design vision of the department heads and leaders like Creative Director Steph Payne and Lead ballroom prop maker Leigh Van Maaren. @binaryrainbow . You should take a minute and see all the artists involved on The Funhouse website here ..

Instead of simply creating a seamless projection scene, we pushed our media server and real time control technology to the next level, delivering something brand new and especially mind-bending.
Designed to work with our media servers and created by our sister company, dev team Wack Monster, founded by David Boon and Scott Guy. We are excited to be  premiering refleXion augmented reality 3d projection mapping tools . With our game engine based projection mapping tools we can create living scenes filled with objects, effects and creatures that react to real world inputs and deliver a smart and exploratory visual experience. Big kudos to David for all his crafty coding and  engineering as we have been designing / prototyping the refleXion suite of tools and have developed some interesting ways to interact with live real time visuals. For The Funhouse realtime 3D underwater world we built an array of simple PIR sensors that collect movement data from the entire room.

reflexion sensors . custom made PCB with 3D printed cases .

Projection mapping realtime 3D worlds with refleXion and the power of Resolume Arena projection mapping tools

I will follow up with some more posts about the refleXion system being used at The Funhouse underwater ballroom as I finish the installation and run it over the summer. Additional posts will feature the work collaborating with Casey Watson / Jazz Cartier Ben Johnson and other artists in the Funhouse art maze preceding the ballroom.

 

LIVEVIDEOART is providing the latest LVA360 media server to power the main Underwater Ballroom space. This will drive synchronised visuals to 7 video projectors and also control the room lighting , sound and be automated by a programmed schedule and collection of presets and live crowd scale motion sensor inputs.

We are using a variety of projectors to achieve the illusions and they are all being provided by our amazing tech hardware sponsor Big Digital Corp.  LVA has worked with Big Digital regularly over the last 2 years as their projection mapping technologist while they have been delivering top tech solutions around Toronto and Canada like the Genesis Experience at Pearson Airport or projection mapping City Hall for the Drake Scorpion album launch. I thank them on behalf of everyone at The Funhouse for setting us up with a great set of installation-class projectors and other hardware.

It is a privilege to be part of something like this and I cant wait to see it come alive for you all to experience. Adding projections into such a detailed set is a huge responsibility so I am pleased to say I think we nailed it and had a great time collaborating with the rest of the team .

Watch the @livevideoart and @reflexion_visuals Instagram for lots of behind the scenes posts throughout the summer.

Tickets are on sale and available here https://www.showclix.com/event/the-funhouse-toronto

http://www.funhousetoronto.com

Scott Vj Guy – LIVEVIDEOART
The Funhouse Digital Media Co Lead

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Motion and depth sensors for AR and Mixed Reality

We have been using several types of sensor and depth cameras over the years to enable advance 3d tracking of peoples positions or even full skeletons. More and more this is being integrated into live visual experiences, used to control the latest real time projected AR graphics. We are aiming to support a variety of sensors in the refleXion augmented reality projections toolkit and I thought I could list some of the most interesting systems I came across in my research.

When Microsoft first came out with the Kinect sensor it was a game changer for people wanting access to affordable and high quality motion tracking. I was excited to see this kind of tech rise and find ways to use it myself like we are doing with unity 3d and refleXion Visuals . Many in the field were sad to hear the Kinect was going off the market but I am happy to say now we have a new Kinect-DK coming and it is more designed for developers this time. It is cloud enabled for deep learning and I guess whatever you can dream upI am very excited to try it out hopefully in the next month or so. When I do I will write up a little report and post a example.

New hotness !

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/kinect-dk/

The ZED camera by Stereo Labs is a special device that I see a lot of potential in. It has two depth cameras for 2K stereoscopic vision and Zdepth detection.

Also built into the camera body is a set of motion and gyro sensors that can detect positional and orientation movements for the on board SLAM (Similtanious Localization And Mapping). ZED can act as the eyes and positional brain for and autonomous navigating robot.  With a range of up to 20 Meters I am very interested in using the ZED camera in our refleXion toolkit for full room depth and motion tracking. There is the regular and the ZED mini that is intended for a VR head mount display upgrade so you can do pass through AR and depth tracking

For developers and researchers looking for a small light weight low er cost solution for machine vision sensor  Tera Bee has some interesting products I could see being very useful in full room AR installations . The Active IR time of flight depth sensors and mini Lidar are meant for high speed depth detection and can be used in scenarios where privacy is protected and vision cameras are not acceptable.

The one system I know I want but can’t afford unless we get a big BIG project is Black Trax from Cast software . Black Trax is a ultra high end solution for detailed positional tracking. It uses a proprietary beacon system and TOF IR cameras to locate up to 80 different objects precise  movement and orientation. with this you can do things like have auto tracking spotlights on performers and projection mapping on moving objects.  Black Trax is a full system of hardware components and PC server to calibrate and stream the data. The positional data can be sent to any number of inputs like a media server or game engine.

Best regards to anyone who I met this week at FITC , Thank you Shawn and the organizers it was a lot of fun and there were really good presentations and demos throughout . Shout out to Beeple for 12 years of every days . I don’t know how you do it . Good guy, gave me a few moments to talk shop. More about that later.

 

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Fairland Funhouse Funjob

I was contacted earlier this year about getting involved in the production of a amazing arts and music pop up venue known as Fiarland Funhouse.  The walk through “art maze” and venue experience to be installed in a fantastic location in Kensington Market that was formerly a grocery store. The Funhouse crew is transforming the space with a full renovation to lead the way for the installation of a series of immersive art installations.
I was happy to join Creative Director Stephanie Payne and the rest of the collaborative team as a Technical Director and Lead Projection designer.  Fairlands Funhouse is a great opportunity to work together with a great collection of local artists and creators , some of the team I know already as friends and previous collaborators too so its a really great project to be a part of and build something fun and truly creative for all of Toronto to enjoy.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Blf-Z3Cn3U9/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

The pre production is almost done and we are ready to get into the location to set up all the fun , waiting on a few last details and working out the bugs in our new projections system. The place opens in early August and runs into October so there will be lots to share and show everyone from the production to the final works. I hope everyone I know in the area will come and join the experience.

Visit the Funhouse website here for info and tickets –
http://fairlandfunhouse.com

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Blog rebuild 2.0

After being hacked and wiped once again I sure hope we have solved our security issues.

LIVEVIDEOART is still here and all those blog posts I put my deepest thoughts into will be reposted and remain in the Archive Section of a new better more regular blog .

Please Visit my Facebook page and drop me a line until we have this site back up to par. https://www.facebook.com/VjGuy/

Or Follow https://www.instagram.com/scottvjguy/