On April 20, Aron Altmark Painted the Town of Birmingham, Alabama Red. It was good.
From the videos I got from Aron, it was really good. Since the first post about Aron’s IndieGogo funding campaign, I’ve been excited to post about what he did, and that it benefitted the American Red Cross, which is also excellent. Light for Enjoyment AND helping people in the process is what I am all about lately. Sometimes you just have to use photons for happiness.
I emailed Aron and asked him about this adventure, links and bolding are mine:
All of this was for Paint the Town Red, an annual digital arts festival that turns downtown Birmingham into a giant media canvas for digital artists. We had a projection-mapped dome with a silent rave in it, many small installations featuring local light artists, a projection-mapped Mini Cooper, fire dancers, trapeze artists, and of course my two large installations. I was the featured artist this year and flew in from LA to do the show.
My main work was a Kinect hack utilizing a video camera, depth sensor, and custom applications — this setup allowed any of the festival attendees to walk into a “stage” area and interact with their digital proxy, projected thirty feet high via a 10K HD projector. It was a bit of an interactive painting game (with a healthy does of DanceDanceRevolution), with realtime input of up to six users. In addition to this, about every half hour my good friend and amazingly talented dancer Erica Thornton put on a performance for the crowd. For the performances, I ran a different custom application that tracked Erica’s left and right hands and created particle systems based on speed and motion, with audio-reactive elements built in as well. Both applications were controlled by a custom UI on an iPad.
Of course, we also had a giant laser graffiti setup going — this one five stories high and about 100 feet wide using a 15K projector + 50mW laser pointer. The citizens of Birmingham came out and made their mark on the city, with messages ranging from the ever-present “Roll Tide” to “I Believe in Birmingham”. The entire event was put on to raise money for the Birmingham-Jefferson Chapter of the American Red Cross.
Aron, you’re awesome. Let’s check out some videos!
The Multi-user Kinect station:
Paint The Town Red – Kinect Station Multi-User from aronaltmark on Vimeo.
The Single-user Kinect Station, with a dancer:
Paint The Town Red – Kinect Station from aronaltmark on Vimeo.
The Single-user Kinect station, again:
Paint The Town Red – Kinect Station from aronaltmark on Vimeo.
The 3 photos here and all of the videography in this post comes from AK Photo (www.facebook.com/asherkrellphoto/), who is Asher Krell from Birmingham, Alabama. Great work, AK!
Thanks to Aron for letting me know about the work!
