Chameleon

I worked with Marshmallow Laser Feast to run workshops with ten local artists in Mexico City and to produce a VR portrait installation for Mutek festival.

Over the course of three weeks we conceptualised and captured data in the form of photogrammetry, laser scanning, lidar, photography and sound recordings. I then led the development of a VR installation built in Unity for the HTC Vive. Plinths formed the basis of the physical setting and were mirrored in VR. Above each virtual plinth was a detailed 3D portrait of a resident of Mexico city. By entering each head you were transported to that person’s world, a point cloud representation of a lidar scan with field recordings. We used spacialized audio techniques to further enhance the feeling of being transported to another world.

Superior rendering quality and performance was achieved using Valve’s Lab Renderer and custom shaders that extended the Lab Renderer. Point clouds were converted into Unity meshes for faster retrieval, and then animated and rendered using custom DX11 compute shaders and fragment/vertex shaders.

Project collaborators and supporters included:
http://www.lumiko.com.au/
http://marshmallowlaserfeast.com
http://www3.centro.edu.mx/

More info here:
http://mutek.mx/en/altcity-cdmx/
http://creativeconomy.britishcouncil.org/projects/altcity-cdmx-chameleon/