Throwback to 2012 – Lightscope an Immersive Installation by Tony Assness

A DIGITAL HALL OF MIRRORS

The first of its kind immersive installation evolved from the original concept by Creative Director Tony Assness and was brought to fruition with a generous contribution from and using technology and expertise provided by TDC.  Developed in 2012,  with very little of the technology we see today this was truly the first of what we now call Immersive Experiences. The Light Scope, an interactive 25m LED tunnel represented a fairground House of Mirrors presented patrons with amusing, distorted reflections of themselves that distended or warped as they moved. The Light Scope also reflected the way that viewers move but in a much more subtle way, and as just one layer of a multi-faceted graphic and sound experience. Visitors enter a 25m tunnel where the LED walls display changing patterns of graphics and video images. The images interact with and respond to the ethereal soundtrack which itself evolves through snippets of classical, contemporary and original music. 

As they progressed, visitors are on a voyage of discovery, finding certain points in the image cycle that react to their movements.

PUMPING OUT THE PIXELS

The Light Scope comprised four video screen segments, each consisting of a 25 wide x four high array of OneLED i6 6mm-pitch display tiles. Each screen array has a resolution of 2000 x 320 and was driven by a custom-built computer via a Folsom Image Pro and oneLED processor. One PC acts as a master to keep the other three in sync with each other and with the soundtrack. The tricky part is the interactivity, which is created using a pair of Xbox 360 Kinect controllers for each screen. The software was developed in C++ using Media Foundation to enable the interactivity.

Jono Perry, Festival Director, said , “Meeting the demand for a seamless 25m-long image created quite a few challenges in the installation phase. TDC invested in 400 of the latest high-resolution panels which are mounted on special trussing so that the 488mm-square tiles are exactly aligned with each other. “There is no specially prepared foundation for the trusses; the marquee is just on ordinary ground. So it was tricky to get the framework dead level across 25 metres,” Jono noted, gesturing at the floor. “There are lots and lots of packing pieces under there!”