Excerpt from Modulo Pi’s article about this experience:

In addition to the regular projections, Culturespaces created an interactive area at the heart of the exhibition hall. The introduction of interactivity within the immersive experience was carefully thought through. Glen Loarer, Production Manager at Culturespaces, explains: “We’re looking into ways to enrich the visitors’ experience without altering the main immersive exhibition. Interactivity comes as a plus. It offers a complementary experience.”

Implementing interactivity within the Fabrique des Lumières came with some challenges. “We have many visitors, so equipping each person with a physical sensor would be very difficult”, says Loarer. “Relying on touch screen terminals would hinder the experience too. Interactivity would be accessible to a few persons, and visitors would have to form lines and wait to access the experience.”

To introduce interactivity while preserving the experience, Culturespaces chose laser detection. The interactive section consists of two facing walls of +90sqm each, and the floor in-between. On each wall, 1 x ROD4 plus scanner laser by Leuze has been installed. The whole interactivity is then handled by the Modulo Kinetic mediaserver. For this new venue, teams of Culturespaces and Cadmos could work with a preview of Modulo Kinetic version 5 and access a bunch of new features designed for interactive experiences. Loarer comments: “Our venues are open 24/7, 11 months of the year, so stability is key. With Modulo Kinetic, we have a fully integrated solution, and no need to add an external tool dedicated to interactivity. That’s a solution of simplicity and reliability for us.”

Culturespaces entrusted Holymage with the creation of the interactive program. Guidelines for the artistic proposal included interacting with the works of Klimt without altering the works of the Austrian artist: “In terms of interactivity in our field, some effects are possible, and others are not since we need to preserve the integrity of the paintings, comments Loarer. For example, content distortion is not an option here as it would alter the artwork.”

Xavier Mailliezand Antoine Géré from Holymage explain:

“We wanted to create a playful experience in which the audience would be involved. Unlike the observer position within the main exhibition, here they become actors thanks to the interaction with the content.” Besides preserving the artwork projected, the creative studio had to consider other constraints: “We had to anticipate the number of visitors that would access the experience simultaneously. The experience must work visually without an audience, or with dozens of visitors at the same time” say Mailliez and Géré. The surface of the room was another important element: “In this area, walls measure more than 5 meters high. This parameter has proved decisive in finding an interaction that would use the walls’ surface fully.”

Based on these elements, Holymage proposed a system of interactive vertical stripes that appear when touching the facing walls, thus revealing the content of the artwork projected on the walls and the floor. Technically speaking, visitors’ hands or bodies are detected by the ROD4 plus scanner lasers when getting close to the walls. The laser being supported by Modulo Kinetic, the media server receives the position of visitors detected in real-time, which triggers the stripes, and reveal the content projected. If visitors are going along one of the two walls, the interactive stripes will follow their movements.

To have this interactive section ready for the opening of the Fabrique des Lumières, Holymage and Cadmos relied on a preview version of Modulo Kinetic and benefited from the new features designed for interactive experiences.

Besides the support of a variety of LiDARs, sensors, and their easy calibration, Holymage could enjoy Modulo Kinetic’s real-time node-based compositing tool and internal library of effects. Using the media server’s timelines, the precalculated media content were easily mixed with the interactive layer.

“The complementarity between the artistic and the technical dimensions allowed us to achieve a result up to what we imagined” states Holymage. “The experience is simple, and it requires flawless and rhythmic animations to be appealing. Modulo Kinetic offers advanced rendering tools that allowed us creating what we wanted. Assigning the data received from the sensors to the media parameters was also very intuitive.”

The main exhibition hall and the 140 sqm interactive area are running smoothly since their opening to the public. “Thanks to Modulo Kinetic, the setup offers remarkable steadiness despite the density of visitors accessing the experience every day. For us, Modulo Kinetic is a high-performance tool, with reassuring reliability and versatility” concludes Holymage.

Full article > https://bit.ly/MPi-FDL