Tag Archives: mask

The Dreamer

The Dreamer is alive. My new illuminated sculpture summons the spirits of Albert Einstein and other free thinkers, speaking to us from across space and time. Their faces appear on a translucent mask through the magic of rear-projected video, which brings them to life as if they were right in front of you, as shown in the video above.

The Dreamer’s face keeps transforming, showing fleeting characters and images, evoking memories and ideas that can move us and transform our lives. My goal is to make us more aware of how characters like these can influence us and change the way we perceive the world around us.

The effect is surreal, and this art piece seems to be breaking new ground. Special thanks to my Pataphysical Studios friends Jean Bolte (a.k.a. Dr. Figurine) for first suggesting the use of talking head videos, to Geo Monley (a.k.a. Dr. Geo) for the gift of vacuum forming at Tam Makers, and to Freddy Hahne (a.k.a. Dr. Really) for requesting that we conjure up Dr. Einstein!

See more pictures in our Dreamer photo album.

Exhibits

This interactive art piece will be presented in different ways:

• as part of the Time Machine we’re building at Pataphysical Studios (see photos above)

• as a stand-alone exhibit in art shows and galleries

• in large street performance during public events

• in short videos on the web.

The Dreamer is inspired by radical puppetry, maker technology and modern art. It is also informed by our recent art projects: Art Float, Bamboodu Theater, Maker Art workshops and Ubu’s Dreams.

Development

The Dreamer is being developed at Tam Makers and Pataphysical Studios, our maker spaces in Mill Valley, where we are creating our first prototypes.

I’ve been prototyping The Dreamer for a few months now, and this interactive art project is coming along really well. I started by projecting photos against blank party masks, then creating clay sculptures of flattened faces, vacuum-forming them, and rear-projecting videos of talking heads inside our new translucent plastic masks.

See more photos in our Dreamer album.

We are just getting started on this project, so we don’t have final specs yet. We will add them here soon, after we’re done experimenting with our first prototypes. The small AAXA P2B projector we’re using seems to work best about 24″ away from a standard 6″ wide mask. And the mask’s illumination varies based on your viewing angle, so we may want to make it rotate a bit from left to right, using a motorized turntable, as shown below.  

Next Steps

To show what the Dreamer is thinking, our next prototypes will display images of people and nature, sparking different moods, each represented by a different color, as shown below.

The Dreamer’s emotions can be shown with different colored lights, such as: red for anger, orange for fear, yellow for happiness, green for surprise, blue for sadness, purple for love, for example.

You can change the Dreamer’s worldview by pressing buttons to make him/her more happy or sad, angry or kind, fearful or curious (like social media emoticons). In response, the Dreamer’s head lights up with different colors and facial expressions, as these emotions are activated in his/her mind.

This kinetic sculpture can give us a glimpse at what goes on inside our heads, as images of our lives pass by, fleeting like clouds in the sky, colored by our moods. The Dreamer’s quiet face keeps transforming, responding to new images and emotions with images and sounds of its own.

As times goes by, we see the interplay of the forces that drive us: anger can turn into love, sadness into joy, fear into curiosity. And we can learn how changing our emotions can transform how we view the world.

We started by experimenting with medium-size heads (8-inch high), to develop the characters and their interactions. These versions will be shown in toy theatres (about 2 feet square).

Future versions could let us open the Dreamer’s head to see the characters that lurk inside and drive her emotions. These characters could be moved or replaced at will, to change the influence they have on the Dreamer. For those versions, we can adapt the customizable robot kits we developed in our Maker Art classes.

In the next phase, we could create larger versions of the Dreamer for street theater performances, in public settings such as marches or fairs. For those larger version, we could re-use the same trailer we built for the Art Float, which could support a large puppet as high as 8-feet tall.

We can create fun interactive experiences with the Dreamer as a focal point. In “Share Your Dream”, we would invite you to become the Dreamer for a moment, and project your own face inside its head. You would then tell us about your dream and we could record you on video.  

The Dreamer invites us to better understand how our emotions make us perceive the world in different ways. It can show us how to replace our destructive emotions with a more positive outlook.

Learn more on our planning page: http://bit.ly/dreamer-plan

See more photos in our Dreamer album.

Research

In previous experiments conducted in summer 2016 by Fabrice Florin and Jean Bolte, we attempted to bring characters to life by projecting videos of human faces onto ‘life casts’. For these first tests, we projected some of Fabrice’s interviews with Jean’s daughter Natalina and our friend Mark Petrakis onto the David Bowie and Sean Connery life casts, as well as on a plain mannequin head and mask.

The results of these first tests were very encouraging, as you can see in this video and in these photos of our first session and second session.

We think we can apply this projection mapping technique to the Dreamer project by combining full face projections with images of what the characters are thinking. For the Time Machine, we can project re-enactions of historical figures, against masks or heads set in a dark box behind of the Time Machine’s porthole. Opening the porthole would reveal an animated face from the past or future, which would speak to you for a moment, across time and space.

Here are some of our observations from those first tests:

• this technique works well to bring characters to life

• it creates the illusion that you are seeing a real person

• aligning the faces from the videos with the life casts can be tricky

• we may need to hold the actor’s heads to keep them aligned while we shoot

• getting the eyes, nose and mouth to match may require adjusting the video as well

• some interesting expressions come out when the faces are not perfectly aligned

• people can be made to look older or younger, depending which cast you use

• when the face looks straight at the camera, you really feel that it is talking to you

• some facial expressions work really well, like shifting eyes left and right

• some interesting effects can be created by speeding up the footage, as in Max Headroom

Findings from these first experiments have informed the Dreamer’s development. Shifting from front-projected life casts to rear-projected translucent masks has opened up new ways to make it all work in a small space.

 This article was updated on Dec. 27, to add a video and photos of our first working prototype.

Greetings from Bali

I had a wonderful trip to Bali with my yoga studio in March 2014. We spent a week near Ubud, in the heart of island — and found a healthy balance between cultural and spiritual explorations.

Here is a short slideshow with highlights from this trip, set to the hypnotic gamelan music we heard everywhere.

To see more, check out this full slideshow. The individual photos can be viewed and shared here on Flickr (browse the full photo archive here).

Bali-Highlights-Fabrice-2014-Thumbnail-00

The trip was led by my longtime teacher Erika Trice, and organized by International Yoga, in partnership with the Bali Institute.  We stayed at Furama Villas, a lovely resort in the rice terraces near Ubud, where a friendly staff provided a great service with gamelan, incense and sweet fruits.

DCIM100GOPRO

 

We usually started and ended each day with an energizing yoga session — and ventured off in the island during the afternoons and evenings.

Bali-Highlights-Fabrice-2014-Thumbnail-01

On day 1, I met with the master mask maker I.B Anom, who introduced me to some of the special powers of his art. With the help of my driver Pinda, we found a nice miniature Garuda for our art project — and went off on a chase for Ooga-Oogas, giant demon figures which each village is building to fend off evil spirits for the upcoming New Year.

Bali-Highlights-Fabrice-2014-Thumbnail-03

 

On day 2, we went into nearby Ubud to visit the inspiring Neka art museum and watch a mesmerizing Legong dance performance.

Bali-Highlights-Fabrice-2014-Thumbnail-04

On day 3, we joined a cleansing ceremony to purify holy objects with ocean water — thousands of villages across the island made the same trip to the beach and we were honored to be part of this ritual.

Bali-Highlights-Fabrice-2014-Thumbnail-05

 

We then visited a master puppet maker, who brought a few of his characters to life for us and showed us around his family compound.

Bali-Highlights-Fabrice-2014-Thumbnail-07

 

And we ended the day with a hypnotic performance of Kecak — a ‘choir’ of men sat in a circle to re-enact the Hindu Ramanya epic with a spellbinding chant.

Bali-Highlights-Fabrice-2014-Thumbnail-08

On day 4, I met the talented young mask maker I.B. Anom Suryawan. We connected on many levels, and he is excited to collaborate on our Balinese Cuckoo Clock project: I now feel like I have a new friend in Bali.

Bali-Highlights-Fabrice-2014-Thumbnail-21

 

We then joined celebrations for the Balinese New Year, when every village in the island parades ‘ogoh-ogoh’, large demonic statues symbolizing malevolent spirits that need to be exorcised. It was really fun to meet our neighbors in the small village of Bindu, who made us feel part of their community.

On day 5, the entire island shut down to observe Nyepi, the Day of Silence, to reflect and meditate: no flights in or out of Bali, nobody in the streets, no electricity; we stayed in our hotel and I did my part by not taking any photos. 🙂

Bali-Highlights-Fabrice-2014-Thumbnail-23

On day 6, we went to Tirta Empul, where Balinese purify in the holy spring waters, then visited the Prince of Paliatan to discuss the future of Bali.

Bali-Highlights-Fabrice-2014-Thumbnail-14

On day 7, we went to the amazing Royal Pitahama for an afternoon by the river and a divine yoga session in this enchanted spot.

Bali-Highlights-Fabrice-2014-Thumbnail-16

Overall, this was an amazing experience for me, at all levels: physical, cultural and spiritual. I will miss this special place — but I now have some new friends I hope to meet again on my next visit.

Bali-Highlights-Fabrice-2014-Thumbnail-22

Throughout this trip, I’ve been moved by the kindness of our hosts, who are incredibly friendly with strangers like us: I hope we can bring some of that goodwill home with us, our western world could use more of that communal spirit and generosity, which seems especially strong here at the local level.

We have much to learn from the Balinese, to whom I say: Suksuma — thank you!

Bali-Highlights-Fabrice-2014-Thumbnail-17