Fantastic Voyages

The event The Future of cinema ? presented by the Festival du nouveau cinéma and the Society for Arts and Technology [SAT] invite people to explore an immersive exposition : Fantastic Voyages. To present the new paths being explored by motion pictures, every space in the SAT will become a set, creating a series of immersive experiences that bring the visitor into the centre of the work. A physical and mental voyage to the heart of sound and image, in which perception is distorted and visitor/viewers lose track of points of reference and boundaries. Thanks to 360° presentations, stereoscopic 3D, holography and telepresence, visitors will explore a series of spaces in which the senses are blurred, tricked, altered, and even obliterated.

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MOREL’S PANORAMA
MASAKI FUJIHATA

His work proposes a system like a panoramic camera employing a new kind of looking glass. In exhibition, a panoramic camera installed in the room’s center feeds a donut shaped video image which is texture mapped in real time onto the surface of a cylindrical tube which is then projected onto the gallery wall. On the actual viewing surface, another image appears together with this real-time rendered image. And that is mapped imagery which was previously recorded in the same room. In the pre-recorded imagery Fujihata is shown reading an excerpt from Aldolfo Bioy Casares’ “La Invencion de Morel” (The Invention of Morel, 1940) “The Invention of Morel” is a short story about Dr. Morel having created a particular photographic device. This photographic device capable of perfectly three-dimensional recording and playback. The protagonist happens to land on an island, where he experiences a playback of the events that have unfolded on that island via this device. The story was a common reference point for work in the late 1980s, when Virtual Reality was in vogue.

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NFB STEREO LAB

The “scopicals” (stereoscopic musicals) in this exhibit were animated using SANDDE™, a technology that allows the artist to draw in space by hand. This innovative art form combines drawing and sculpture with movement and sound. SANDDE™ is like drawing on paper, except the lines are not confined to a two-dimensional surface. Unlike other forms of computer-generated stereographic imagery, SANDDE™, uses lines that are drawn by hand, literally in space, rather than mathematically generated 3D models, which lack the spontaneity and expressiveness of drawings made by hand. Four 3D films will be shown to the public… including one stereoscopic world premiere!

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CINEMA@HOME GRÉGORY CHATONSKY

Cinema@home is a series of 13 mini-installations, each taking a classic film as a starting point: Lost Highway, Stalker, 12 Angry Men, Vertigo, American Beauty, Shall We Dance, To Have and to Have Not, Nouvelle vague, Casablanca. Drawing from the cinematic legacy embedded in our collective consciousness, the installations assemble variations, not unlike musical improvisations, involving playback speed, interactivity, translation and localization. Select Web 2.0 technologies are used to create variations in the movies, with data processed through Flickr, Amazon and Google Street View. The network contains all possible images. An ironic tribute to the art of the previous century.

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NOX MATER
ÉTUDE NO 2 POUR MUONS ET SILENCE
Lorella Abenavoli Nicolas Reeves

Much has been done to bring the most spectacular celestial events to the human senses: rumbling from the Sun and Jupiter, singing from the rings of Saturn, echoes from pulsars and quasars. These impressive sounds can lead one to forget that the cosmos is in fact a vacuum, where silence reigns. The site offers a fruitful experience of silence. One very small room, made echo-free, is plunged into almost total darkness. On the walls are speakers capable of projecting sound waves quite straight and in a specific direction. Upon striking a wall, a particle gives off a brief burst of sound and little flashes of light. These sounds can be heard only by those who are in their path. Once absorbed by the surface of the walls, they immediately restore the room to darkness, nothingness, and the immensity of its own silence.

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LATE FRAGMENT
CANADIAN FILM CENTRE / NATIONAL FILM BOARD OF CANADA

A collaborative co-production by the Canadian film centre (CFC) and the National film board (NFB), Late Fragment is an example of a new language for cinema in the 21st century – where interaction and cinematic convention come together to create a compelling story experience for the viewer. While the notion of interactive cinema is not entirely new, Late Fragment is North America’s first interactive dramatic feature film and is an important model of collaboration in leading-edge experimental dramatic content and format that will be engrained into Canada’s filmmaking history. Late Fragment is the kind of film audiences will want to play over and over again. There are 3 acts, 9 chapters, 3 endings, 139 scenes, 380 components, 10 loops and 10 rabbit holes in Late Fragment.

FACE
HENDRICK DUSOLLIER

Face is an interactive stereoscopic exhibit that only one person may view at a time. Cramped in a small box, a man whose head and shoulders alone are visible undergoes a series of violent experiences. In a direct one-on-one interaction with the viewer, thrust into the position of voyeur and torturer, the guinea pig’s head is transmogrified and distorted until its bestiality is revealed. The viewer stands in front of a vertical metal box the size of a human body. Two openings at eye level allow one to look inside the box through concave lenses turned toward two screens. Thus the viewer watches a stereoscopic film. The bust inside the box is shown in relief, as if there really were a man inside the box, in front of the viewer. The experience lasts about 6 minutes.

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CYCLORAMA

LA FABRIQUE NUMÉRIQUE
These seven works, produced at an artists’ residence under the Open Territories [TOT] Territoires Ouverts research program launched by the Society for Arts and Technology [SAT], were presented in the Cyclorama, a panoramic projector with immersive sound.

After dark / Après la nuit :: Yann Breuleux, Alain Thibault
The project consists of the production of a video performance made up of multiple constantly changing tracks of audio/video surround.

L’expérience du sacré :: Matthew Burton, Martine Kounouyan, Joseph Lefèvre
This immersive experience is a multimedia poem inspired by three fundamental questions: Where do we come from? Who are we? and Where are we going?

La ville la nuit :: Jean-Ambroise Vesac
The public is at the centre of the exhibit, surrounded by the horizon, where the headiness of infinity is bound. The city sparkles in the distance, full of dreams in which anything is possible.

Réflections… réflexions :: Jean Ranger, Manuel Chantre
A contemplative view loosely inspired by the city of Rio de Janeiro is topped with a series of silhouettes, organic entities and human spirits co-existing in front of false backgrounds.

Annamèse script amérique :: Sylvain Aubé, Zone Grise
This performance is an invitation to an imaginary crossing of the Americas. Women and men share their gestures, voices and technologies for a joint project.

Au lever du jour :: Vincent Chapdelaine
Crows caw, shots ring out, a man drags something. Witnesses react; their perceptions, real or imagined, drive them to flee.

La chute :: Pascal Côté, Jan Pienkowski
Four people meet around a table for coffee. Tension builds to an almost intolerable level for an audience forced into the middle of the argument.

ÉQUIPE DU CYCLORAMA JOSEPH LEFÈVRE: director of residencies (SAT) SÉBASTIEN ROY: associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Operations Research at the Université de Montréal. Director of the 3D Vision Laboratory SYLVAIN CORMIER: developer and research assistant SIMON PIETTE: systems and network administrator| JEAN-MICHEL DUMAS: audio support | RENAUD KASMA: video capture and archives YANN BREULEUX: Web integration

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PANOSCOPE 360° – T’ES OÙ ? / WHERE ARE YOU ?
Luc Courchesne

Where Are You? invites visitors to live the experience of a world with multiple levels in Panoscope 360°, an immersive and interactive projector. Level 0 takes the shape of a navigable 3D screen; it serves as a point of reference and calibration for both the projection system and the visitor, who, through this level, becomes familiar with the immersive experience and controls within reach. Moving to Level +1 reveals collections of audio and video elements arranged as an archive. Each element in the archive serves as a miniature doorway; these elements are the landmarks of a narrative track that unfurls according to the path taken and the interest of the visitors. At Level +2, the elements of these archives become the particles of “clusters” whose general composition is reminiscent of late-19th century Impressionist views of the world and of the earliest forms of abstraction. Finally, going to Level +3 reveals a landscape of mountains and valleys that invokes the idea of the romantic sublime of the end of the 18th century. At each of these levels, visitors can meet other explorers; some of these encounters may occur live through telepresence, while others are pre-recorded in video windows that recall the creator’s earlier interactive portraits. Finally, visitors come face to face with themselves, encountering their own avatars within the artificial world.