Workshop Statement

June 11 and  12, CCCB Sala Raval

Keywords: immersion, interaction, projection mapping, spatial sound

This workshop is aimed at artists, designers, content creators and other creatives who are interested in creating immersive spaces using low-cost and lightweight equipment. It focuses on free/libre software, democratizing what’s possible to do with computer vision, graphics and spatialized audio technologies that are still marginalized.

We will be using off-the-shelf hardware and open-source software to create interactive and immersive experiences, from scratch, in impromptu spaces.

We will present the tools and the process for deploying immersive experiences: characterizing the available space, setting up projection mapping, calibrating video projectors and sound equipment, setting up cameras for real-time pose tracking and estimation, and employing a software pipeline to glue all components together.

The workshop is based on using free/libre open-source software as much as possible, democratizing what’s possible to do with computer vision, computer graphics and spatialized audio technologies that are still marginalized and on the fringes of creative activities.
We will be exploring production pipelines that illustrate the use of software developed by the Metalab in tandem with existing tools that have been seeing wider adoption in recent years. For clarity, we present the proposed toolset in two groups: software developed by the Metalab and third-party software.

Sharing and accessibility are brought by the use of technologies which are easy to obtain. In addition to cameras, videoprojectors and audio speakers, the workshop makes use of free software as well as low-cost hardware. Some of the software is already well known in the community (Godot, Chataigne), whereas our own software is not as much but it addresses use cases which are either not possible with other software or involve costly solutions.

• Founded in 2002, Metalab is the research laboratory of the Society for Arts and Technology (SAT) in Montreal, Canada. Metalab’s mission is twofold: to stimulate the emergence of innovative immersive experiences and to make their design accessible to artists and creators of immersion through an ecosystem of free software that addresses problems that are not easily solved by existing tools. The software (and recently hardware) developed at the Metalab is often used with other existing technologies to facilitate the mixing of video mapping, 3D audio, telepresence and interaction.