Alok B. Nandi (media
author/artist) & Xavier Marichal (Development Engineer)
Caption: transfiction in utHOPEia / interactive installation directed by A. Nandi & engineered by Alterface / Salzburg
Title of Presentation: Transfiction [in Mixed Realities]
Description of Project:
Transfiction is a concept, a system as well as
an area for scientific and artistic exploration. Designed by Alok b. Nandi
and Xavier Marichal, it has seen its first development in a collaboration
project allowing "transportation into fictional spaces" (hence
the coined term of transfiction) of people in the streets of the city-university
of Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium. It then moved into the design of interactive
installations, especially featuring immersion and intuition for the users,
exploring ubiquitous computing. The area of research is part of "Mixed
Reality", a continuum ranging from Augmented Reality to Augmented
Virtuality, including telepresence.
The collaboration between Nandi (media author/artist)
and Marichal (development engineer) took place through a research between
the university and the publishing/printing sector. It resulted in the
Urbicande-la-Neuve demonstrator (http://urbicande.tele.ucl.ac.be)
and then the launch of the European art.live project, concluded by two
public trials (in Paris Bercy and in the UNESCO protected heritage Arc-et-Senans
Royal Saltworks). In parallel, the Transfiction approach of Mixed Reality
environment design was selected for Imagina 2000 and Imagina 2002, as
well as for conferences and exhibitions in Tokyo, Bonn, Avignon, New York.
At the crossroads of art and technology, of virtual and real spaces, of
real-time and diegetic time, Transfiction allows one to explore narrative
concepts which demonstrate the capabilities to engage audiences.
Contrary to many approaches to virtuality or mixed reality, the transfiction
system does not need any dedicated hardware, nor for computation nor for
tracking of real objects/persons. It runs on standard Pentium PCs and
video cameras are the only sensors used. This vision-based interface approach
allows freedom for the user, no more tied to hardware devices such as
helmets and gloves.
Transfiction is designed for mixing synthetic and natural images in real
time and allows one to interact in these input/output screens. Transfiction
is a system for intuitive interaction in a non-obtrusive manner, allowing
one to develop a novel media, accumulating the representation knowledge
of previous media, such as cinema, performance, theatre.
Successful interaction relies on user ability to coordinate cognitive
perception and physical action within the virtual environment. In these
hybrid action spaces, narrative modalities are investigated through body
tracking, position detection and image recognition systems. The developed
technical architecture allows the implementation of "narrative graphs" (interactive scenarios) and opens the possibility to analyse the cognitive
and visual actions and reactions to an immersive intuitive interactive
system.
A series of several short films have been made to show the results of
the collaboration between Nandi and Marichal. These will be presented
(documenting installations for children, explaining their usage, ...).
The way of working in Transfiction is a "techno-art ping-pong",
throwing ideas and looking to rapid prototype for early validation.. The
collaboration process is an active Q&A mechanism: the tech raises
the following: [this is possible, is it of any use?], on the artistic
side, the question is [I wish to do this, is it feasible?]
Transfiction: beyond fiction = back to (mixed) reality!
Website Address for Documentation Materials:
http://www.transfiction.net
Alok b. Nandi, media author/artist, is working
on cross-media projects, in mixed-realities (virtual, augmented, ...).
Born in Likasi, Congo (ex-Zaire). Belgian of Indian origin. He is exploring
narrative spaces through cinema, photo, new media. He has been awarded
for urbicande.be in 1997, has been selected for Imagina 2000 and 2002
(with X. Marichal) and has done interventions in Porto 2001, in Laval
Virtual 2002 (Hyperadventures). He is board member of SACD, Societe civile
des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques. He has presented Transfiction@Beaubourg
at the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris. In April 2001, he was speaker
at the CODE conference in Cambridge, UK, talking about "Fluxographies:
from story-telling to story-sharing". As a multimedia author in the
"art.live" project, he is investigating mixed-realities narratives:
installations in Bercy Paris in April 2001 and in Arc-et-Senans in November
2001.
Engineer by studies (Ecole Polytechnique, ULB, Brussels Free Univ.), Alok
b. Nandi completed a Postgraduation in Management (VUB) and a "Licence
en Philosophie et Lettres" (cinematographic writing and analysis).
He completed EAVE/Europe 94 (intensive training in film production, EU))
and EAVE/IMM 95 (Interactive Multimedia, with the project 'Interactive
Polyphonies') and was selected for the 1997 SAGAs Interactive Fiction
Writing Seminar (EU MEDIA II, GEECT, Munchen Film & TV School).
E-mail address: nandi@transfiction.net
Address: Alok b. Nandi, 182, av. W. Churchill, B-1180 Brussels,
Belgium
Xavier Marichal was born in Uccle, Belgium, in
1971. He received the Electrical Engineering degree from the Universite
catholique de Louvain (UCL), Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, in 1994, after
a four-month ERASMUS scholarship at the Instituto Superior Tecnico (IST),
in Lisbon, Portugal. He got a PhD, also from UCL, in 1998. After having
worked for Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Palo Alto, he is with the Laboratoire
de Telecommunications et Teledetecition of UCL where he supervised the
European art.live project for two years before creating the Alterface
company. His main interests are motion estimation/ compensation and image
analysis in the framework of distributed interactive video.
E-mail address: marichal@transfiction.net
Address: Xacier Marichal, c/o laboratoire de Telecommunications,
Batiment Stevin, 2 place du Levant, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
website address: http://www.transfiction.net
