Community Spotlight

Walking across the stage at their convocation ceremony is a symbolic moment in the lives of graduating students. For the families and friends of graduates at Loyalist College, that moment has been made more visible by the addition of a graphics system engineered by Chris Wilms (@cwilms-loyalist).

The hard work, dedication, and collaboration of 45 performers from the London metropolitan area culminated in four performances of the stage production Hyper. Hyper had multiple purposes: to provide an evening of entertainment and culture for audiences and to showcase the artistic and musical work of the performers, all of whom have learning disabilities. A highlight of the show was a dance piece in which performers painted projected imagery with their body movements, using skeletal tracking and graphics technology that included Vuo.

Intersection*ology, a collaboration between visual artist Lori Hepner (@lhepner) and musician Kendra Ross, lies at the “intersection between art, gender and technology”. With soundscapes, projected imagery, and dance, the performance evokes women’s experiences across time and place, from slave dungeons centuries ago in West Africa to the Women’s March on Washington in January. Vuo played a part in this intersectional-feminist piece, transforming light from LEDs worn by the performers into imagery projected in real time onstage.

Circus Family, an audiovisual design studio in Amsterdam, used Vuo to create two projects that enchanted their audiences. These are two of several projects where Circus Family used Vuo. In The Rain Project, raindrops created a display of images, light, and sound in a natural forest, and in the Hema Sintersizer, children created songs with a giant music-making machine during the Dutch children’s celebration, Sinterklaas. To learn more, about I interviewed Circus Family’s Cas Dekker.

“J’utilise la lumière et l’image comme matières premières dans mon travail de recherche et de création.” (“I use light and image as raw materials in my work of research and creation.”) This is how Xavier Boyaud — a self-taught visual artist, lighting designer, scenographer, and videographer — describes his work. Vuo is one of the tools that Xavier uses to sculpt light and image.

Justin Beardsell (@meno) of Studio Meno is collaborating with Dolby to bring a new clubbing experience to Ministry of Sound in London — and he’s using Vuo behind the scenes.

Ministry of Sound has introduced a Dolby Atmos sound system that creates 3D soundscapes. Unlike with typical stereo tracks, listeners hear the music moving through space, coming from different sides and overhead.

Rallentando is an interactive installation that uses Vuo to invoke a multi-sensory virtual forest. Using a combination of images, sounds, and interactive performance, “the audience experiences a gradual slackening of tempo, leaving behind the distractions of contemporary urban life.”

Rallentando was created by Gwenyth Dobie, with William Mackwood (@wmackwood) leading the technical integration. Gwenyth and William, co-artistic directors of Out of the Box Productions, recently installed Rallentando at Hub14 in Toronto.

The play “The Floor: Shopping Rolls Camouflaged” is a foray into a surreal world of gravity-defying motion. By turns funny, poignant, and exuberant, the performance blends the human with the technological. Vuo plays a major role in this performance written and directed by Teo Dumski.

You’re an exhibitor at one of the world’s biggest auto trade shows. There are almost a million visitors, and a thousand other exhibitors competing for their attention. How do you project the suave aesthetic of a luxury car brand in a way that catches visitors’ eyes? jens probst (a.k.a. zwei-p) and Yellow Design took on the challenge by creating an elegant multi-screen display with Vuo.

Imagine scratching the air like a turntable to make a particle system groove. Anthony Gene Guterac made it happen with his Vuo composition, 02_, controlled by Leap Motion and live audio input.