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projectiondesign in Immersive eArts World Exhibition

As part of its ongoing commitment to exploring new frontiers in audio-visual communication, Norwegian high-performance projector manufacturer projectiondesign has announced its support for the forthcoming eArts Festival. The Festival, which started on 18 October in Shanghai, will offer a three week programme of events, performances and installations, uniting artists from all over the world and creating a fusion of art and new technology.

The eArts Festival activities will take place across a range of venues, each with its own theme. At the Shanghai Science & Technology Museum, the theme is ‘eLandscapes', in which curator Richard Castelli seeks "a total re-working of the screen-spectator relationship, for which new technologies and new narrations are necessary". Among the exhibition's wide variety of interactive and immersive displays is AVIE - the Advanced Visualization and Interaction Environment pioneered by the Australian-based artist and director of the UNSW iCinema Research Centre, Jeffrey Shaw.

The Shanghai implementation of AVIE will see 12 of projectiondesign's F20 sx+ DLP projectors firing two 1,000 x 8,000 pixel polarized stereoscopic images over the entire surface of a 360-degree screen, which can be viewed by 30 or more visitors using polarizing glasses. A cluster of seven high-performance graphics PCs delivers the image data to the projectors using custom geometry correction and edge-blending software.

Complementing the unique visualization and interaction features of AVIE is its spatialized audio system - a 14.2 channel system with custom surround-sound application software. With its speakers situated behind the micro-perforated projection screen, this system enables a fully immersive 360-degree placement of sound anywhere around the viewers.

As well as AVIE, a similar panoramic exhibit using two F20 sx+ projectors will take place in the Hampi exhibit. Five F20 sx+ projectors will be used in a dome configuration in the Hemisphere exhibit. A further six F20 sx+ projectors will be shown in the Globorama as well as 12 projectors configured in a hexagonal back projection in the Virtual Room exhibit. All areas of the event use the existing resources of both iCinema Centre and ZKM Karlsruhe to create an unprecedented array of projectiondesign products to create numerous spectacular visulization scenarios.

Industry-veteran Thierry Ollivier, sales manager at projectiondesign manages the Russia, Japan, Korea and France territories and played a key role in supporting the numerous projects and sponsorship of the touring, comments: "As video projector manufacturers, it is our responsibility not just to give our backing to established business and domestic applications of our technology, but to support artistic work which has the potential to give people an entirely new perspective on how they relate to, and interact with, projected imagery.

"An immersive experience such as this requires projectors with a very high degree of uniformity as well as high levels of brightness and contrast, and that is what our F20 sx+ delivers. In return for supplying these projectors, we are in the privileged position of being able to see, at first hand, how visitors react to such an immersive and interactive experience. This in turn deepens our understanding of how people perceive projected images and enriches our own R&D efforts going forward."

As well as the eArts installation, projectiondesign F20 sx+ projectors will also be used for two other projects, co-authored by Jeffrey Shaw and Sarah Kenderdine.

The first is Place-Hampi which includes a series of 3D stereoscopic panoramas inspired by the drama of Hindu mythology opening on November 12, 2008 and showing for the next 15 months (ending January 2010) at the Immigration Museum in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

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projectiondesign in Immersive eArts World Exhibition

20th October 2008

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