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The M.I.D.E.N. transports you into Nova’s Reality

The M.I.D.E.N. transports you into Nova’s Reality

Using Virtual Production Techniques to Film a Music Video

Author

Emma Powell and Eilene Koo

Photo Credit: Eilene Koo

Photo Credit: Eilene Koo

The Michigan Immersive Digital Experience Nexus (MIDEN) doesn’t seem very large at first, as it is a 10 x 10 x 10 foot space and a blank canvas ready for its next project like “Nova’s Reality.” For this special performance, though, the MIDEN transformed into an expansive galactic environment, placing electronic jazz musician Nova Zaii in the middle of a long subway car traveling through space. 

The technological centerpiece of Zaii’s performance was the Nova Portals, a cone-shaped instrument invented by Zaii which uses motion and doesn’t require direct contact to create sound. Zaii created the Nova Portals during his time as a student at the University of Michigan and majoring in Performing Arts Technology and Jazz Studies. 

Several members of the U-M community helped bring Zaii’s performance to life inside the MIDEN. Akash Dewan, a graduated senior and director of the project, first met Nova in his freshman year. “I first met Nova in my freshman year in the spring, when I decided to shoot Masimba Hwati’s opening ceremony for his piece at the UMMA,” Dewan said. Masinba Hwati is a Zimbabwean sculptor and musician who made the Ngoromera, a sculpture made out of many different objects and musical instruments. When Hwati performed at the opening ceremony, his drummer was Nova Zaii. 

“I took photos throughout the performance and took some particularly cool photos of Nova, so I decided to chat with him after the event and show him the photos I took,” Dewan said. “Since then, I have been following his journey on Instagram as a jazz musician part of the Juju Exchange [a musical partnership between Zaii and two childhood friends] and inventor of the Nova Portals, which I’ve always taken a fascination towards due to my interest in the intersection of technology and art.”

Following major hardware upgrades, the MIDEN’s image refresh rate has doubled, along with brighter light outputs, to support stereoscopic immersion for two simultaneous users — four perspective projections for four eyes, 60 times per second. 

Sean Petty, senior software developer at the DMC’s Emerging Technologies Group, assisted the “Nova’s Reality” team inside the MIDEN and explained how the space was used. 

“This project is using the MIDEN as a virtual production space, where the MIDEN screens will deliver a perspective correct background that will make it appear as if the actor is actually in the virtual environment from the perspective of the camera,” Petty said. “To accommodate this, we modified the MIDEN to only display one image per frame, rather than the four that would be required for the usual two user VR experience. We also reconfigured the motion tracking to track the motion of the camera, rather than the motion of the VR glasses.”

The high-speed projection refresh rate of 240 scans per second allowed for a flicker-free recording by the video camera.

“This entire process was extremely inspiring for all of us involved, and maintains my strong drive to continue to find new, fresh interdisciplinary approaches to visualizing music,” said Dewan. After this project and their graduation, each member will also be continuing individual creative work. 

The full project will be published on novazaii.com and akashdewan.com. 

Photo Credit: Eilene Koo

Find more of their creative works through their Instagram profiles:

Performer & Inventor of the Nova Portals: Nova Zaii, @novazaii

Director, Co-Director of Photography, Editor, 3D Graphics Developer: Akash Dewan, @akashdewann

Audio Engineer/Technician: Adithya Sastr, @adithyasastry

3D Graphics Developer: Elvis Xiang

Co-Director of Photography: Gokul Madathil, @madlight.productions

BTS Photographer: Randall Xiao, @randysfoto

MIDEN Staff + Technical Support: Sean Petty and Theodore Hall

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Planting Disabled Futures – A call for artists to collaborate

Planting Disabled Futures

OPen Call for Artist Collaborators

Author

Petra Kuppers

Petra Kuppers is disability culture activist and a community performance artist. She creates participatory community performance environments that think/feel into public space, tenderness, site-specific art, access and experimentation. Petra grounds herself in disability culture methods, and uses ecosomatics, performance, and speculative writing to engage audiences toward more socially just and enjoyable futures.


Her latest project, Planting Disabled Futures, is funded by a Just Tech fellowship.

In the Planting Disabled Futures project, Petra aims to use live performance approaches and virtual reality (and other) technologies to share energy, liveliness, ongoingness, crip joy and experiences of pain. 

In the development of the Virtual Reality (VR) components of the project, we will ask: How can VR allow us to celebrate difference, rather than engage in hyper-mobile fantasies of overcoming and of disembodied life? How can our disabled bodymindspirits develop non-extractive intimacies, in energetic touch, using VR as a tool toward connecting with plants, with the world, even in pain, in climate emergency, in our ongoing COVID world?

A watercolor mock-up of the Crip Cave, with Moira Williams’ Stim Tent, two VR stations, a potential sound bed, and a table for drawing/writing.

Petra envisions a sensory art installation equipped with a VR experience, stimming tent, a soundbed and a drawing and writing table. The VR experience would be supplemented by actors providing opportunities to engage with unique taste, touch and smell sensations as the environment is navigated.

A cyanotype (blue) and watercolor mock-up of what the VR app might look like: a violet leaf with sensation hubs, little white ink portals, that might lead to an audio dream journey

The VR experience involved in the Crip-Cave is expected to be tree-like environment that allows participants to select either a visual or an auditory experience. Participants can travel down to the roots and experience earth critters or up to the branches and into the leafy canopy. In both locations, “sensory hubs” would take participants on a journey to other worlds – worlds potentially populated with content produced by fellow artists.

A cyanotype/watercolor mock-up of little critters that might accompany you on your journey through the environment.

Artist collaborators are welcome to contribute their talents generating 3d worlds in Unreal Engine, reciting poetry, animating or composing music to create a dream journey in virtual reality. Artists generating digital content they would like considered for inclusion in this unique art installation can reach out to: [email protected]

To learn more about Planting Disabled Futures, visit:
 https://www.petrakuppers.com/planting-disabled-futures

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The Jewish Tradition of Tsedakah as Exemplified in Pushkes – Online Exhibit

The Jewish Tradition of Tsedakah as Exemplified in Pushkes – Online Exhibit

The pushke exhibit first appeared at the Jean & Samuel Frankel Center for Judaic Studies in the summer of 2015. The exhibit was composed of 40 pushkes (charitable donation boxes) of all shapes and sizes, situated in a series of display cases. The many diverse charity boxes reflect the breadth of the Jewish Heritage Collection Dedicated to Mark and Dave Harris, and illustrate the value of giving in Jewish communities throughout the world. Prior to being moved into storage for safekeeping, the collection underwent a lengthy scanning processes with help from the Duderstadt Center, to convert the collection into digitized 3D objects expanding accessibility by allowing the exhibit to be preserved and view-able online.

The Pushke Collection was digitized by the Duderstadt Center using the process of Photogrammetry. In this process, several high fidelity digital photographs are captured 360 degrees around the subject. These photos are analyzed by a computer algorithm to identify matching features on a per-pixel basis between photographs. These identified features are then used to triangulate a position within 3D space, allowing a 3D model of the object to be generated. The color information from the initial photographs is then mapped to the surface of the object in order to achieve a realistic digital replica. Select pieces of the Pushke collection have been further refined to correct imperfections resulting from the capturing process by an artist using digital sculpting and painting software, with the entire digital collection also being optimized for more efficient viewing on the web.

A web viewer was then developed and integrated into the Frankel Center’s WordPress site, to display and allow manipulation of the various pushkes in the collection. The web viewer allows each pushke to be rotated 360 degrees, and for the pushkes to be zoomed in or out, allowing for more detailed viewing than what traditional photographs typically allow.

The result of this effort, the Frankel Center’s online exhibit, “Charity Saves from Death: The Jewish Tradition of Tsedakah as Exemplified in Pushkes” can be viewed here: https://exhibits.judaic.lsa.umich.edu/pushke

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Leisure & Luxury in the Age of Nero: VR Exhibit for the Kelsey Museum

Leisure & Luxury in the Age of Nero: VR Exhibit for the Kelsey Museum

As part of the Kelsey museum’s most grandiose exhibition to date, Leisure & Luxury in the Age of Nero: The Villas of Oplontis Near Pompeii features over 230 artifacts from the ancient world. These artifacts originate from the ancient villa of Oplontis, an area near Pompeii that was destroyed when Mt. Vesuvius erupted.

Real world location of the ancient villa of Oplontis

The traveling exhibit explores the lavish lifestyle and economic interests of ancient Rome’s wealthiest. This location is currently being excavated and is currently off limits to the general public, but as part of the Kelsey’s exhibit, visitors will get to experience the location with the assistance of virtual reality headsets like the Oculus Rift and tablet devices.

The Duderstadt Center worked closely with curator Elaine Gazda as well as the Oplontis Project team from the University of Texas to optimize a virtual re-creation for the Oculus Rift & MIDEN and to generate panoramic viewers for tablet devices. The virtual environment uses high resolution photos and scan data captured on location, mapped to the surface of 3D models to give a very real sense of being at the real-world location.

Visitors to the Kelsey can navigate Oplontis in virtual reality through the use of an Oculus Rift headset, or through panoramas presented on tablet devices.

Visitors to the Kelsey can traverse this recreation using the Rift, or they can travel to the Duderstadt to experience it in the MIDEN – and not only can viewers experience the villa as they appear in modern day-they can also toggle on an artist’s re-creation of what the villas would have looked like before their destruction. In the re-created version of the scene, the ornate murals covering the walls of the villa are restored and foliage and ornate statues populate the scene. Alongside the virtual reality experience, the Kelsey Museum will also house a physically reconstructed replica of one of the rooms found in the villa as part of the exhibit.

Leisure & Luxury in the Age of Nero: The Villas of Oplontis Near Pompeii is a traveling exhibit that will also be on display at the Museum of the Rockies at the Montana State University, Bozeman, and the Smith College Museum of Art in Northampton, Massachusetts.

On Display at the Kelsey Museum, Leisure & Luxury in the Age of Nero: The Villas of Oplontis Near Pompeii