Laser Augmented video sculpture

Works

I work with video a lot and am always wondering how these small flashing lights captivate us, and how we become numb to this phenomena of persistence of vision that brings so many images to our minds in so many ways. I have, like so many others been seduced my the idea of a hologram, of video that leaps into space, that exists in more dimensions that the flat plane of the screen. In February 2018 I debuted a new work that creates a way to push the idea of sculpted video a little further, and without the tricks of a peppers ghost or 3d glasses or the solitary experience of virtual reality.

This presentation of this work was a collaboration with video artist Karl Klomp and was shown inside the club nights of Sonic Acts Festival in Amsterdam 2018

Technically this work uses openCv to analyse incoming video via a capture card or the NDI protocol. The program performs feature extraction and delaunay triangulation in real time before converting the desired features to ILDA data. The ILDA data is then mapped through a homography matrix back onto the video screen that is playing the same material as was presented to the capture device. Due to the latency in LED mapping systems the laser stayed synchronous with the original video stream.