Setup

Live video feed from the street is projected on the canvases. Indoors you see people walking by first on the canvas and then behind the window, then again disappearing through the other canvas. The background (street and buildings) is extracted from the video feed.


See video documentation here.

At the opening

Setting up

At the museum, a week before the opening. All seems to work fine! Exciting to see it all come together!

The exhibition

14.8.–2.11.2009
Gottberg–Kåhre Project: A Dialogue
A part of the Helsinki Festival programme
Susanne Gottberg & Markus Kåhre
Amos Anderson Museum

"Gottberg–Kåhre Project
Susanne Gottberg and Markus Kåhre, two greatly acclaimed Finnish artists with highly differing styles of expression, recently hit upon a new dynamic of collaboration and after two years in the studio, are now ready for their exhibition at the Amos Anderson Art Museum.

Building on active dialogue and a continual exchange of ideas on art, reality and the act of seeing, their piece is at once more spatial than an installation, more illusory than a painting and more alive than a film. Things are no longer what they seem, the impossible is now a possibility."
http://www.helsinginjuhlaviikot.fi/en/elokuva-kuvataide/event/7/41

Open
Mon, Thurs, Fri 10–18, Tues closed, Wed 10–20, Sat & Sun 11–17
Entrance fees
Adults 8 €
Seniors 6 €
Students 4 € (All Media Lab Helsinki students: free entry during this exhibition)

Looks good!

Susanne Gottberg, Markus Kåhre, Ramyah Gowrishankar and Liisa Tervinen were today at the Amos Anderson museum to test once again the projection. We tried out white and black backgrounds and some different tints in the Processing. The best color seemed to be grey with (textile) canvas as a projection material. That way there was still enough contrast with the people walking by and the canvas. The result was painting-like - and it fits nicely to the exhibition.

Check up at Amos

Today we met Markus Kåhre at the Amos Andersson museum to check up how the script works. It went well and the lighting conditions seem to work nicely. We decided to meet again next week to check things out with a projector and test it so that Susanne Gottberg also sees it.






Thinking about how to connect the camera to the window.

Testing in cloudy weather

We met up today at the Amos Andersson museum with Ramyah to test the camera outside the building. We use Apple's iSight connected to a MacBook Pro with firewire. The right place for the camera seemed to be between the double windows of the museum. Tomorrow we will test some more inside the museum.

Script work

Test scenario is set up now at the Media Lab 4th floor computer room. Ramyah + iSight + Mac + Processing.

This is how it works:


Ramyah:



View from the window:




iSight:



Processing:



Result:

Visit to the Amos Anderson Museum's warehouse

On Sunday we went together with Ilpo to visit the artist's to the warehouse of the Amos Anderson Museum. There we discovered their beautiful piece of work that was like a painted movie set. Surroundings were all painted on to the walls.

Noisy video with extracted background

Experiments with the webcam

Today we did some IR filter experiments with a Logitech Webcam. We thought of removing the IR filter of it and attaching some developed color film to the lens. But only did we realized it too late, that there was no IR filter and that we could have attached the color film to it without braking it into pieces..

Live and learn..

Using IR camera + IR light?

The main problem in the tracking the people on the street is the changing lighting conditions as the exhibition will be open from morning to the evening. We were doing some research about it and found this example of the usage of IR camera + IR light to create higher contrast:


Same space in IR:


Pictures are from: http://vvvv.org/tiki-view_forum_thread.php?forumId=7&comments_parentId=11180

Email from the artist

Artist describes the forthcoming exhibition and his work with the other artist:
“We are working on the show together, not only doing a joint exhibition but making all the works together. The center piece is a huge painted installation with the idea of stepping into a painting. The projection works like the main counterpoint to that. The exhibition investigates the relation between picture and space, museum and the outside, art and reality. We are also searching after a new kind of dramaturgy in the field of visual art.”

First version with processing

Ramyah made the first draft out of the system with Processing.

Here is a demo video of it which was taken indoors and with fixed lighting conditions.
This program:
1. Takes reference picture when keyboard is clicked & marks it with white color
2. Compares the color values of the live footage and the reference image.
3. Shows only the difference, rest remains white.

Meeting the artists

Today I met the artist and visited the gallery (the Amos Anderson Art Museum) to get an idea of the space and the setup. The space has three windows and two solid walls where the projections will be.

Idea is to create continuity on the people walking on the projection, then live passing the windows and then continuing the walk on the latter solid wall as a projection.

Ilpo approaches

Media Lab Helsinki Video Tech supervisor Ilpo Kari approached us in the matter of helping two Finnish artists in their forthcoming exhibition. The problem was to find a way to use live video footage of people walking by a gallery space outdoors and project the footage inside the gallery. That's not tricky at all, but we were supposed to extract the background and project only the people.