House of Shadow Silence

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I’ve been continuing to develop “House of Shadow Silence” for the past year. In August (2017), I presented the project as a site-specific VR installation at the Academy Theater in Portland, OR (also a historic theater). Viewers entered into the cinema in groups of five, put on Oculus Rift VR headsets and were transported back to Kiesler’s Film Guild Cinema. Above is  documentation of the event–with screen recordings from the experience. The surround sound design was done by Chris Carlson. The public presentation of the project was funded in part by the Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC).

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Motion study no. 5 officially wraps up my month-long online residency at Akademie Schloss Solitude. In this study, I’m simulating projecting films onto animating geometric forms and the walls of the Film Guild Cinema, as Kiesler (the architect) had specified in his designs (this feature was cut due to budgetary constraints). This animation uses a graphics technique called projective texturing and was made in openFrameworks using OpenGL. The films are short looping sections from Hans Richter’s “Rhythms 21”, which also inspired the animation of the geometry.

Thanks to Mario Doulis (curator), Clara Herrmann, Judith Engel, and Akademie Schloss Solitude for selecting this project and supporting it over the duration of the virtual reality residency (for more info: http://schloss-post.com/category/web-residents/re-entering-the-ultimate-display/). 

I still plan to keep working on the project (House of Shadow-Silence) over the next few months, so keep checking this url!

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In this motion study, I’ve integrated the rectangle animations (from previous weeks) into the 3D model of the Film Guild Cinema. Virtual lights in the room illuminate the rectangles, which cast shadows onto the walls and the shapes behind them–using a graphics technique called Exponential Shadow Mapping. This study has three different scenes, which begin after traveling through the theatre and into the eye. Down the road, when the viewer enters into the eye, I’d like to emulate the experience of traveling into the grain of a film. 

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Kiesler certainly played with perspective in his design for the Film Guild Cinema. Although its clean horizontal lines hinted at a rectangular design, the room was actually shaped like a megaphone and included ambiguous features that made it challenging to determine where walls began and ended (see the concept image below). This provided some considerable challenges for designing a 3D model from the handful of existing photographs that I could find online and in books. Here are some initial architectural studies of the cinema (design & modeling by Jordan Tull: http://www.jordantull.com/). 

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“House of Shadow Silence” motion study #3.

Kiesler’s design for the Film Guild cinema involved projecting films onto the left and right walls during specific moments of a film to create a greater sense of immersion. 

In this motion study, I’m (simulating) projecting Hans Richter’s films onto animated geometry that extends from the cinema’s walls. I’m really enjoying how the grainy film texture gives character to the hard-edged geometry. If you’re here for the first time, I’ve referencing Richter’s work in this project because it was screened during the Film Guild Cinema’s inauguration. 

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“House of Shadow Silence” motion study #2. 

I’ve programmed a handful of behaviors that I’ve observed in Richter’s films: growing/shrinking, swapping dimensions, aligning shapes, etc. This study has a bit more continuity between segments, so shapes stay on screen, changing they appearance and behaviour over time. There are no hard cuts, which can be drastic in VR. 

I’m also experimenting with shadows, using a rendering technique called exponential shadow mapping that’s used to cast shadows onto objects towards the back of the scene. Of course, this is how shadows work in the real world, but it’s a bit of extra work to get it running in the 3D world of OpenGL. 

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These week I’ve been experimenting with “projecting” Hans Richter’s films onto moving 3D geometry – creating similarity and contrast in form and motion and adding the grainy texture of 1920s film onto my own digital forms. In 3D software this technique is called texture projection and it simulates the effect of a slide projector or a film projector.

Animations coming soon …

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In this first motion study for “House of Shadow Silence”, I’m using area lights to project light onto a flat surface (down the road this will be the walls of the cinema). The pulsing lights emanate from rectangular shapes that move like the forms found in Hans Richter’s early films «Rhythmus 21» and «Rhythmus 23» (see clip below).

This study has 5 distinct sections: objects moving in contrast to one another (fast/slow, large/small), objects moving on screen, objects splitting apart, objects in constructivist arrangements, multiple sections overlapping, and objects moving off screen. For the next study, I’m planning to evolve the animations so that there’s more continuity between the different segments.

Area lights are a kind of 3D light often founds in video games and 3D modeling applications. Different than spot lights or direction lights (such as the sun), they emit light from a rectangular area and are often used for simulating ceiling lighting or windows (http://blog.digitaltutors.com/understanding-different-light-types/).

This study was programmed in c++ and OpenGL using openFrameworks (http://www.openframeworks.cc)

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I've planned a series of animation studies to share throughout the month – working with primitive forms and animating them in the 3D model of Kiesler's theatre. Taking inspiration from the nickname that Kiesler gave the cinema–The House of Shadow Silence–shadows are going to play a big role in my investigations.

Here are a few animation ideas I've been sketching out: (1) overlapping rectangles with shadows cast onto the walls, (2) invisible lights dancing through the theatre casting shadows onto the walls, (3) certain shapes behaving as lights, illuminating others, (4) compositions scrolling across & along the cinema's walls, and (5) the viewer floating through the cinema and into it's dynamic eye.

Stay tuned for a slew of motion studies ..

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The Film Guild Cinema’s inaugural weekend featured a mixture of American, Russian and German films. I actually came across the brochure on Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/Frederick-Kiesler-Cinema-Inaugural-Brochure/dp/B0085EN8YS – for a mere $4500 if anybody is feeling generous) and discovered that a film by visual music pioneer Hans Richter was screened. Being a fan of his constructivist animation work from the 1920s, I thought that it would be fitting to revisit Richter's work within virtual copy of Kiesler's theatre–with primitive geometry moving around in all directions.

The image from my first post (the concept sketch for this project) took inspiration from Richter's work: I created shapes found is his early animations (Rhythmus 21 and Rhythmus 23) and textured still frames from these animations onto the geometry that expands from the cinema's walls.  This was the first of a number of studies that I'm planning to make this month.

In his early animated works, Richter sought to distill the medium of cinema, to understand its underlying rhythms and their impact on viewers' emotions. Thus his removal of all actors, all drama and exclusive use of primitive forms. Partially inspired by the work of Viking Eggeling and partially working in collaboration with him, Richter created a cinematic language to expose these rhythms. His composition involved using stark contrast in movement and visual form, establishing relationships between forms to better understand the differences, and then establishing mutual interactions: "from the way the two aspects of contrasting and relating depend on each other, their mutual interaction, comes feeling." (from G–Zeitscrift für elementar Gestaltung, June 1923)

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I'm delighted to be a part of Schloss Solitude's online virtual reality residency (http://schloss-post.com/category/web-residents/re-entering-the-ultimate-display/). Over the course of the next four weeks, I'll be sharing progress on my latest VR work "The House of Shadow Silence."

"House" takes places in Frederick Kiesler's stunning Film Guild Cinema, which opened in 1929 in New York City and operated for a few decades (it's now a recording studio). Kiesler, a Swiss architect, was a member of the De Stijl group. This cinema was among the first to be designed specifically for the viewing of film. Keep in mind that, at the time, most films were being viewed in theater settings, which had considerable different seating arrangements and viewing angles.

I fell in love with Kiesler’s cinema when I came across photos of its modernist interior (in Anne Friedberg's magnificent book The Virtual Window) and was moved by the architect's goal for the spectator: he/she would "lose himself in an imaginary, endless space." To support this experience, Kiesler added a few forward-thinking features. The "screen-o-scope" was "a device for the main screen with three auxiliary screens spanning the auditorium." For heightened moments in a film, additional projections would cover the side walls creating a deeper immersion. Similarly, the "project-o-scope" was "a gallery of light-stations encircling the auditorium sending rays in all directions." Sadly, the screen-o-scope was never realized due to budgetary constraints. I suppose the project-o-scope experienced the same fate.

I'm attracted to transcendental experiences and often try to create them through my software-generated animations. I’m especially interested in the possibility of using VR to create impossible scenarios that unfold within familiar spaces. Last year, I created a VR experience that transported visitors to Portland's Upfor Gallery into an immersive painterly experience that unfolded in a virtual clone of the gallery (http://mantissa.ca/projects/ascension.php). Viewers looking upwards would float into a pulsating void within the ceiling. When I encountered Kiesler's goal for an endless cinematic experience, I wanted to experience his vision using VR.

Thanks++ to Mario Doulis, Clara Herrmann and Akademie Schloss Solitude for the opportunity and support.