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Digital Projection reinvents artworks with technology enhancements

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Detail view of Kunigunde, together with Irina Bakova.

EPFL Pavilions exhibition looks at artworks from new angle

Digital Projection, a specialist in laser projectors, has detailed its work on a technologically-advanced art exhibition in Switzerland.

The Deep Fakes: Art and its Double exhibition, which runs until early February, is creating conversation with a unique showcase of emerging digital culture at EPFL Pavilions in the French-speaking city of Lausanne. Technologies disrupting the art world include artificial intelligence, computer vision, interactive and immersive media, as well as 3D and 5D printing are showcased.

The exhibition’s curator and EPFL Pavilions director Sarah Kenderdine explains that the 1,000m² exhibition is “the culmination of several years of new creative practices emerging from the world of computer science,” dubbing the new artefacts, building upon existing sculptures and artworks, as ‘cultural deep fakes’.

Amongst the so-called ‘cultural deep fakes’ on display are The Next Rembrandt, which uses AI technology to posthumously create a ‘new’ work from the Dutch 17th-century artist; The Golden Calf, by influential media artist Jeffrey Shaw, which exposes itself only when the guest has orbited around its pedestal; and Abbey Saint Michel, Bamberg, a complete digital reconstruction of the interior of the 1,000-year-old monastery.

Bamberg Monastery Church of St. Michael interactive tour, 2021
Stills from Abbey of St Michel model and interactive, courtesy of City of Bamberg, ArcTron 3D and Consensive

“It was only recently that artists and producers began to fully grasp the potential of computational production and new forms of art,” she adds.

Kenderdine is a professor of museology with over two decades of experience developing and producing large-scale immersive exhibitions for museums and galleries. The director has also worked at notable world heritage sites such as Angkor in Cambodia and the archaeological site of Olympia in Greece.

In stark contrast, Kenderdine now works at the high-tech museum site located within Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne (EPFL).

Faking it

A Digital Projection system was installed in Lausanne, installed by Bauhaus University. The setup comprises one INSIGHT Satellite MLS 4K HFR 360 projector, along with six pairs of Volfoni-made glasses.

Using an ultra-fast 360fps frame rate unique to Multi-View, this standalone projector can provide an authentic 3D experience to many viewers simultaneously, each having an exhibit view that remains relevant to their changing position. This allows visitors to see and interact with each other in a collaborative experience.

Kenderine adds “Instead of providing 120 frames per second, which is enough only for single-user 3D, the INSIGHT Satellite MLS 4K HFR 360 delivers an unrivalled 360 frames. Giving each user a unique perspective on an object provides us with unpredicted ways to collaborate.”

Digital Projection Deep Fakes Stills from Abbey of St Michel model and interactive
Deep Fakes Stills from Abbey of St Michel model and interactive courtesy of City of Bamberg, ArcTron 3D and Consensive

In Satellite Modular Laser System (MLS) spec, the INSIGHT Satellite MLS 4K HFR 360 offers attraction professionals a solution for modern multi-media exhibitions, explains Digital Projection’s Thierry Ollivier, who led the company’s involvement in the Deep Fakes project:

“With Satellite MLS, the small, lightweight projector head is dissociated from the light source, which allows for bright, 4K projection with a compact footprint and minimal noise/heat generation near the exhibits themselves. This unique design makes Satellite MLS ideal for theatres and opera houses, historic buildings, and other heat/space-restricted applications.”

Creating a new canvas

Technologies such as Multi-View and Satellite MLS could play an increasingly significant role in prospective art and museum exhibitions, where AV will help immerse sightseers in increasingly interactive experiences, concludes Kenderdine:

“At a museum level, these tools offer new ways to tell stories: stories that are not necessarily didactic, stories that are emerging and responding to user interaction, and stories visitors can embody and inhabit.

“AV opens up the archive and gives it so much more potential for reuse. It gives artists and creators and curators a new canvas to create aesthetic frameworks we have never seen before, and modalities of engagement which transport and delight visitors”

Digital Projection Deep Fakes Poster EPFL Pavilions
EPFL Pavilions Photo: Sarah Kenderdine

As for the Digital Projection solution specifically, EPFL Pavilions couldn’t be happier, she adds. “The unit worked like a dream – with remote support from Digital Projection it was up and running in half a day.

“The public also adore it. They recognise the difference; it’s like nothing they have seen before. The scientists at EPFL have also come for multiple visits to the exhibition, to see the new opportunities presented by the technologies.”

“Working with Professor Kenderdine for the last ten years on projects involving projection and virtual reality, I applaud her talent and efforts to bridge the gap between technology and art. With Deep Fakes, by combining expertise from Digital Projection, Consensive and Volfoni, Sarah and her team have demonstrated to a wide range of audiences, from world-leading cultural authorities to local students, what a virtual reality experience should be like. Seeing is believing.”

Digital Projection announced its new regional sales manager for Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, Josef Saller in December.

Headline photo credit: Sarah Kenderdine

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Adam Whittaker

Adam studied Marketing and Advertising Management at Leeds Beckett University. Originally from Lancashire and now based in Norfolk, UK, you can usually find him appreciating art deco design or on a roller coaster.

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