Disappear Here - 5 projections at once

2010 ATL&S Innovator award recipients Kim Olson and Nathan Montgomery produced a projection and movement themed show in the Butoh style.  The goal is to "explore the wilderness within and without, the seen, unseen, and the world’s ephemeral beauty."  Nathan began the show in a net hung from the ceiling as a 'womb' (or diaper as some of us called it) and natural elements such as flowers and tumbleweeds were used as props.  The technical challenges for me were tremendous, as I was responsible for synchronizing 5 different projections.



As far as synchronizing the 5 projectors used to surround the audience, I build a remote multivideo playback system.  In otherwords, I played all the videos from a bunch of different computers at the same time.  Using three Macs and some network magic, I was able to synchronize the 5 separate projectors being used as scenery.  Signals were communicated through the UDP protocol.  I actually used the wireless network on campus (this is the second time I've done this) and it was 100% successful.  As a result, the videos all started at the same time and the complicated visual effect was achieved.  The videos were created by Ana Baer Carrillo and Caren McCaleb.


This system is great because any number of computers/projectors can be added to the mix.  The only crucial element is that all the videos align.

Multivid player (top), Multivid receiver (bottom)

The software was written in guess what... MAX/MSP.  Each computer had a video player with an object waiting for a play or pause command (as well as some other things).  The master computer was responsible for starting and stopping all the videos, as well as changing the files and ensuring that the video was in fullscreen.  Additionally there is functionality to fade in and out each video globally or locally.  In fact, each video can be controlled individually at the master control panel.  There are some other features in newer versions of this program.  Mainly improvements in processor usage.  Please email me for any information about the patch.  (By the way, those of you not familiar with MAX/MSP, the two different screenshots represent different aspects of the program, so they don't necessarily correlate visually)