Ellus Hard Worker

Encouraged by the IED project I started prospecting for possible clients but it was through the colleague who works with me in the virtual garden that we got access to the Ellus staff, who were preparing for São Paulo Fashion Week.

In the initial conversations they planned to create an installation for an internal event but when the director of the SPFW parades, Zee Nunes, saw what we had done at IED, the plans changed for something much bigger.

We suggested creating a huge 30x3m interactive projection that would react with the models on the catwalk.

Ellus was launching the Ellus Hard Worker collection which involved darker jeans and a theme related to factory and mine workers. Thinking about it we made a visual proposal and created a monster of what would be the final interaction.

Moster

The challenge was bigger than we were comfortable: a single camera on the ceiling wouldn't solve the capture, the environment was too dark to identify the position of the models, the projection couldn't be done with a single projector and only a computer wouldn't have enough power the graphics and resolutions involved. All this also had to be controlled by an operator in real time as the director thought appropriate.

With the objectives and challenges in mind we outlined a technical plan that would be the basis for our development: we would use three MacPros responsible for rendering the final image using six 15k lumens projectors, two on each machine. These three machines would respond to signals sent in Open Sound Control from another iMac that would simultaneously process images from 6 cameras attached to the ceiling. To finish an iPhone would be with the controller that would accompany the director of the parade. This device would send the scene switching signals over Wi-Fi to iMac, coordinating the whole process.

Following the plan we started the software development: Dear MacPro would run an instance of our software made in OpenFrameworks that would be responsible for presenting the graphics. Each instance only render a part of the graphics and so we had to create a synchronization solution between them.

In iMac we chained six Fire-I cameras. We created a solution that used only a part of each image that together formed a continuous image of the catwalk. However, considering that the environment would be dark, we needed to create contrast between the models and the floor. In this sense we adapted the cameras to capture infrared images and we lit the floor in this way, invisible to the human eye.

A smaller version of the intalation so we can develop and test withou having to walk 30m every time :-)

Software developed to capture and stitch image from 6 firewire cameras.

Happiness when you manage to get all particles synced across all machines.

The client was happy with the result that generated frisson in the audience. However, we were so busy in production that we did not make good captures. The material here on video was found on the internet.