Sunday, November 24, 2013

New Look to our Visual Loops

After much consideration, it was decided to give a new look to the Sensebellum Visual Loops channel. All the videos are still Creative Commons and free to use and abuse as you'd like.


Freaknight 2013, getting the live feel

We were contacted by USC to provide projection mapping across 2 buildings near the entrance to their yearly event, "Freaknight", a Halloween meets Carnival ritual that's been going on for 17 years now.

From the start it was clear that the production needed an original touch - one that matched the look and feel of the established aesthetic. In the interest of a creative approach, simple logistics, and accurate modeling, a live scene was built to act as a small scale version of the architecture. From this point we located some bugs, worms, crickets, ants, and even a tarantula - all in the real - to crawl over, through, across, and in between the building models. Extrapolate this content to the digital realm and then came some post production to get the look. A few weeks later and there is a two-story spider crawling over the face of buildings; intricately interacting in a very real and physical way with each window and ledge.

See more from the official report on the Sensebellum website here.


Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Summer Meltdown 2013

What a great week out at by Darrington for the 13th annual Summer Meltdown Music Festival. It was a real treat to work this festival again and to bring out our best for everyone to enjoy.

Prime spot was our new modular stage design we call the Rubix.






Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Stepping Stones at WWU

Here is a bit of a behind the scenes look at Stepping Stones, an event Sensebellum hosted on Western Washington University's Old Main building during June 8th of graduation week. The core of the piece featured a piano that drove projections and sound tied with the building and the architecture. Each key of the piano became a window or column and had a certain sound with it. After a good session on the instrument, we opened it up for interpretation with a microphone that anyone could walk up to, speak into, augment the facade of Old Main in response to different levels in the audio spectrum.

The concept behind Stepping Stones is that of taking steps toward the future. This can be interpreted  through the graduating classes present, the possibilities of audio/visual and interactive experiences becoming the norm, the work it took to build Old Main using locally derived stone; and lastly, learning and being entertained together in mutually beneficial ways. This is what we work towards, Stepping Stones was a step towards that, for all of us.





Here are some of the screen shots from the Quartz Composer compositions:

Interactive dynamics showing audio levels modulating the building in a multiple series image

SimplPiano numeric to color translations

SimplPiano media multiplexers for the different sets


Sunday, May 5, 2013

The Stretchable Fabric of Video

Working with some alternative fabrics has enabled some great performances lately. Working with custom line tracing for our bank of objects has been helpful; very excited to be using in house software for nearly the entire show now.

See you out there this summer.





Monday, March 4, 2013

15 Frames of Fame

Recently, it was brought to our attention that a few seconds of footage from our good times at the 2012 Capitol Hill Block Party were featured in Anthony Bourdain's Tv show "Layover". Check that below at 1:08 and around 22:10 again.



Well right on!

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Return to SOURCE

This being Sensebellum's 2nd year at SOURCE, it felt like coming home.

Not only is there an extremely high contrast between the raw jungle and the refine technology and ideas present, but they actually work in conjunction to provide a new model for living.

From space travel to festivals composting and growing their own food, these ideas - and more - were brought up and openly discussed during scheduled speeches and informal gatherings. it was great.



To boot, the live coding was off the charts. We collaborated with a Maui local, Scott Provonsha, on his sound/sand cymatics and integrated our feedback based cellular autonoma code on top of it. The result was amazing. Video to come soon. On top of this, the festival was built around participation and interaction so all of the digital installations had some dynamic element.

It was a great year and we are excited back here at the office to implement these new ideas and more. Stay on the lookout this spring for some great outdoor events in the pacific northwest!






Sunday, February 10, 2013

Rhyming with Orange

Running Senses at most of our shows now. The color effects are coming in strong with multiple channels running at 60 FPS. Check out these pictures from a venetian themed masquerade at Pier 66 in Seattle.





Monday, February 4, 2013

Working in the Colors

Been working on Senses a bit, getting it stable as can be, straight simple design - coming along lovely.

Also, here to share a few clips, straight recorded out of Senses with Syphon - standard. Check out this great Syphon Recorder for snagging videos from video feeds made by the fine folks at v002.

Make sure to download the full looped version from the Vimeo page!

Monday, January 28, 2013

Mapping Skins & 3D Geometry

Working on some new approaches to ramp up how we engage our architecture.

Check out these sweet designs (moving of course) we used on the 90' video wall in Chazzzam at Winter Bounce in Bellingham last January 19th. It's always nice to rock a spot where video can be fully appreciated...