2014 Stage Innovation

A sculptural backdrop shared centrestage with indie dance trio RÜFÜS on their 2014 Australian tour. A compelling partnership arranged by Red Bull Australia. The 12,000-strong LED stage prop was designed to morph into varying stage sizes. Our custom hardware controller and software enabled real-time visual response to the band’s euphoric beats. What’s more the entire rig easily packed down into seven bags, ready to fly to the next gig.

2013 Real-time 3D Breakthroughs

Particle Picnic was a 12-hour pleasure excursion of 3D visuals seen through 3D glasses with music electrostatically tuned to blow your mind. Our team of particle ‘visualists’ and electronic musicians served up a feast of sensory delights all night long. Part of White Night Melbourne, the queue extended around the block. We've been at the forefront of interactive 3D technology over the past decade. Particle Picnic is a celebration of our passion for particles and our homegrown 3D software engine Pixile. Under the hood, we're talking millions of particles, rendered in real-time, over 3x HD resolutions at 60 FPS. Live audio responsiveness, two iPad controllers, shadows, reflections, ambient occlusion and more.

2010 World’s First Light Seesaw

Since creation nearly a decade ago, our Light Seesaw has been embraced all over the world including Brunei, China, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong and many other international destinations. This reinvention of classic play equipment appeals to all ages and is loved by young and young at heart across the planet.

2011-2012 Big in Japan

This journey began in 2011 when an earthquake struck while the studio was setting up in Japan. The show was cancelled but it was such a brilliant collaboration we all pulled together to see our shared vision through. Exactly one year later we coloured the mountain from launch to landing in a celebration of life and our love for Japan. 

In three days and two nights, we set up our projectors, camera tracking and nifty iPhone app enabling the audience to interact with visuals in real-time. As the riders approached and hit the ramp, they set off virtual trails and explosions.

2010 Introducing Extreme Projection

“How would you like to create your extreme projections for some of the best riders in the world?” The team at Red Bull HQ posed us this question and just like that OFF THE PLANET was born. Always testing and experimenting, we’d first projected onto snow a couple of years prior at our local Australian snowfields when we’d carved the slopes by day and lit ice by night – anticipating that we’d get the chance to transform snow into otherworldly forms. It's an obvious extrapolation when snowboarding and art are in your blood. At 9000 feet on Mammoth Mountain we brought a new perspective to extreme sports by fusing interactive art with riders styling through the air while taking the viewer to fresh snowboarding terrain: the moon.

2009 Interactive Water Projection

A celestial extravaganza of wondrous visions; ethereal sounds and mesmerising liquid illuminations – all controlled by eight floating orbs. Music and visuals were created in real-time from the interplay between participants; the orbs; and the virtual objects projected. To play, viewers merely had to set the balls in motion by tossing them, flicking them, or using them to make ripples. In this liquid vortex there were no rules only infinite compositions to be created. The resulting audio-visual compositions ranged from appearing to be microscopic bacterial growths in petri dishes to infinite, multiplying galaxies.

2008 The First 3D Snow Projection

In the mid-2000s we travelled to Mt Bulla and experimented with projecting on snow. We created some of the best R&D workshops imaginable by snowboarding by day and learning about the particularities of projecting on snow by night.

2007 Immersive Art Experiences

The Light Garden was a whimsical exploration of wireless connectivity in the most unwired of locations: a garden. We invited guests inside to bask in the glow of a projected future filled with virtual delights including ‘pondcasts’; video-chatting flora, hyperlinked trees and a forest that trickled sap made from newsfeeds.

2006 Early Projection Mapping

Pixile was an interactive digital sculpture which transformed a series of static objects into an interactive illusion. Based on the elegance of a mobile and the dynamics of real-time 3D computer rendering, Pixile creates a powerful illusion of real-life objects spinning, changing and responding to each other. Viewers interact with the sculpture by moving and rotating objects in real-time. Pixile responds back to viewers’ movements, sounds and even to the wind. To achieve these effects, a custom-built 3D engine was developed to mimic and simulate the real-life physical objects in a 3D generated environment. The virtual scene is then projected onto the real-life structure; casting virtual textures onto the static spheres. The laws of physics are also applied to the virtual scene in order to create the perception that the sculpture is reacting to gravity and friction. This combination of techniques creates a unique and effective interactive holographic illusion.

2003 World’s First Digital Rocking Horse and First Digital Art Acquisition by Museum Victoria

Virsual is a wireless, ride-on rocking horse equipped with its own motion sensor device. As riders saddle up, a 3D game is activated and displayed on screen. The hardware is an off-the-shelf wireless USB device that tracks its own rocking motion and as well as riders’ heads. Virsual is a contemporary rocking horse executed in an exaggerated cartoony aesthetic.

https://collecgtions.museumvictoria.com.au/items/1098712