I am getting closer to understanding how best to present my exhibit based on ‘The Optician of Lampedusa’:

Main Exhibition piece – ground floor room Wilson Road with blinds down

• Stock film and audio to provide a background of seagulls diving and screeching in open sea, possibly calming to no seagulls, and a short clip of refugees in the water. This is in effect three videos and one audio clip edited together, looping continuously. I have yet to decide how this film will be projected, but hopefully using the existing ceiling projector or the fitting it uses with my own projector. The audio will be coming from the whole of the wall on which the film is projected using my Feonic invisible speaker device attached to the wall and wired to my digital media player and amplifier.

  Alternatively, I can blue-tooth from my projector to my sound bar. I have to consider how these would be hidden from view, and how I can easily adjust the sound level. If I use my projector, I have a remote, so in that case, problem solved. I also have to see how the projection maps to the wall. I would like to project to where the wall meets the floor, representing the sea, and possibly partially overlaying on the floor itself. If the latter I could cover the floor with the grey lino I lent Leonie for her installation last year. I may need to paint the wall light grey to match.

• Two life sized sculptures on transparent acrylic plinths. One of Theresa, the optician’s wife and the other of Leo as a refugee. Theresa would look down towards the refugee, representing her in the boat and him in the sea. I need to consider lighting, possibly diffused spots from above, or from below inside the plinths. If possible I will 3D print the head section of Leo’s bust of the refugee in PLA (again – it was too small last time in spite of taking 7 days to print!) with runners and riders attached, so that this section can be remade in unfinished bronze, and attached to the rest of his sculpture in white plaster.
• The actors narrating their experience. Whilst the sound of the sea can be heard in the exhibition room (hopefully, if others sharing the room do not mind), I will provide two unattached headphones for the audience to listen to this approximately 5 minute track. My FiiO Bravo headphones store the tracks in the headset itself and thus do not need to be attached or linked by blue-tooth or wi-fi to an audio player. They operate independently, and will need to be recharged every night.
• There will be a ‘performance’ for a couple of hours each day using the HoloLens. The actors’ performance will have previously been video recorded with spatial sound against a green screen using my Vuze 3D 360 degree camera, edited in 2D (sadly, the HoloLens uses a different holographic technology so cannot view Stereoscopic 3D). A viewer using the HoloLens will see the background video and sculptures in the real world view of the room, and two green screened actors performing in the HoloLens headset, while listening to the audio using an attached B&W P-7 set of headphones. The audio in this case will be 3D sound which will be precisely located where the actors performed, with seagulls flying over their heads and the sea lapping around them. A TV monitor will show the rest of the audience what can be seen in the HoloLens.

Performance in the Lecture Theatre

If possible there will be additional performances whenever the Lecture Theatre in Wilson Road is free and for about 2 hours a day. This will demonstrate the use of the HoloLens for digital art ‘conservation’, which was the theme of my MA dissertation. This will be the same performance as shown in my earlier blog for my wife’s MA show, using same sculptures as the main exhibition piece, but smaller and alongside their holographic versions.

I hope to also provide the audience with the opportunity of viewing my main exhibition entirely in Virtual Reality using the HTC Vive. When filming the actors with the Vuze camera I will also undertake a second edit in Stereoscopic 3D which can be viewed stereoscopically in Virtual Reality. I aim to also include the 3D images of the sculptures, and the background video in this Virtual Reality experience. We will see if I have enough time to do this.

Well that’s it for now. Must get back to completing the life size bust of Theresa, which should be finished today. Hoorah.

Happy Easter – a welcome couple of days off with my family.