Virtual Marionette

From the 10th till the 23th of  May at Mosteiro São Bento da Vitória, Porto.

Coproduction Lafontana – Animated Forms / Teatro Nacional São João (TNSJ) from the original text of Fernão Mendes Pinto, with the interpretation of Marcelo Lafontana.

Inspired by the adventures of Fernão Mendes Pinto, a portuguese explorer, reported
from the book “Peregrinação” , published in 1614, Marcelo Lafontana makes a journey through strange stories that are presented in a miniature world.

Through the intersection of puppetry, in particular, the expressiveness of paper theater with the cinematic language, this small world becomes a large space of illusion in which the narrative arises.

The stage, is transformed into a film studio, where scenarios and characters drawn and cut from cardboard are handle in front of video cameras. The images are captured by a multimedia architecture providing image processing, image mixing, sound effects, chroma key, performance animation, and all happens in real-time. The final result is projected on a screen, like a sail of a boat that opens to the charms of a journey through the imagination.
from
Fernão Mendes Pinto

staging e interpretation
Marcelo Lafontana

dramaturgy
José Coutinhas

scenography
Sílvia Fagundes

design of the characters and scenarios
Luís Félix, Rebeca das Neves

photography
JPedro Martins

music
Eduardo Patriarca

Multimedia (architecture and contents)
Luís Grifu

Lighting design
Pedro Cardoso

staging assistance
Rita Nova

I´ve implemented some of the digital puppetry methods in this project. Methods and tools are described in another post in this blog.

Street Outdoor

Been invited to give a MasterClass  April 7th, at Festival ESMAE 2014.

ESMAE-IPP – Escola Superior de Música, Artes e Espectáculo do Instituto Politécnico do Porto | 4 – 16 of April 2014

In this MasterClass, i have presented my research on performance animation with digital puppetry methods and an overview on HCI. I also made some live demonstrations using novel digital interfaces to control animation, sound and music.

full program (PDF 700k) FestivalEsmae2014a

Music & Emotions at CLIP – Porto International School by INAUTISMO

An event to raise awareness of autism and the research that is being made in this field. An opportunity to present activities and projects for therapy or for stimulating people with spectrum disorder.

“Paralelamente aos workshops, contamos com convidados especiais que vieram alegrar ainda mais este evento, os palhaços do O””pital com as suas brincadeiras, a deficiwood com artigos em madeira feitos à mão e a universidade do porto com o projecto “Virtual-Marionette”, um espaço de exploração da animação performativa (tempo real), recorrendo a interfaces digitais recreando os tradicionais controladores de marionetas.” Reference

ToyWorlds is an artistic installation, a body motion game for two players that stimulates the use of our body in particular our hands to manipulate puppets like marionettes. The player must control a virtual marionette and try to catch boxes with the puppets body or by looking at the boxes.

Structure of the puppet´s booth

A preview of the game.

Exploring Leapmotion interface using hand / fingers to control a puppet´s head.

Very simple example of digital puppetry build in Unity.

(more…)

Exhibition of Virtual Marionette interactive installations at Teatro Municipal de Vila do Conde from 14th December till 31th December 2013.

I was invited to participate with my virtual marionette work as part of my contribution to Lafontana Formas Animadas (LFA) puppetry company. This exhibition gathers the work of 15 years of puppetry from LFA. My research and work contributes to new approaches of puppetry.

I invite the participants to interact with Inversus and bePuppit installations and to send me some feedback to virtual.marionette@grifu.com

more pictures, click the more button.

(more…)

The Virtual Marionette installation “BePuppit” in a puppetry exhibition at Teatro Municipal de Vila do Conde.
We invite the audience to participate in this play which recreates a traditional puppet booth.

“PUPPIT” is an interactive experience that explores different ways to control and animate virtual puppets in live environments using digital puppetry methods as a storytelling tool.
With “Body-PUPPIT” the users body is the puppet controller, producing performance animation with body motion. We challenge the participants to explore their bodies to give life to puppets that are different from human morphology as if they were using hand shadows to create imaginative figures.
By playing with puppets in a dramatic way the user can create the illusion of life and build a narrative.

PUPPIT consists in a several prototypes that are the work-in-progress of a PhD research called “Virtual Marionette – Interaction Model for Digital Puppetry”. The goal of the prototypes is to explore and evaluate different rigging, mapping and interaction methods, and to develop tools for artists and non-expert artists that can be used in as collaborative environment for storytelling – making live narratives.

The exhibition is open every day since the 14th till 22th December except mondays.

www.virtualmarionette.grifu.com
December 2013

Results from the explorative work made at “Espaço do Tempo” in Montemor-o-Novo in December 2013.

The manipulation of sound and visual elements using the body as interface like a marionette controller.
We explore the potential of the body motion in three main areas:
– Body expression to model sound and visual
– Body motion to trigger sounds
– Body position in space to model and trigger sounds

We define a sensitive space where the performer could move and interact with the audio-visual elements.

As we can verify in the video the way the performer interacts is somehow resembled  to the way a puppeteer manipulates marionettes.

As future work we will explore deeply the perceptive motion of sound and visual. Creating a relation between diegetic and non-diegetic sounds and similar approach to the performance animation.

Video performance by: Amândio Anastácio
Multimedia: Grifu

Dec.2013

Performance Animation LAB. at Cinanima 2013 (Espinho/Portugal) – Animation Film Festival

The main objective of this Lab is to disseminate Digital Puppetry as a methodology to create performance animation.
We present our methodology based on simple steps: Create->Rig->Map->Animate

November 2013

Reel with CINANIMA 2013 labs

(more…)

Result animation from the performance animation Lab at CINANIMA 2013 (Animation Film Festival in Espinho/Portugal).
Real-time storytelling and live directing with virtual marionettes using digital interfaces to create performance animation.
This play was performed with three digital puppeteers / actors and one director.

Framework:
Hardware used: 2 Wiimotes and 2 Nunchucks; 1 Microsoft Kinect; 1 Ipad, 1 Macbook DualCore 2005; VideoProjector
Software used: Animata, Pure Data, Osceleton, Osculator, TouchOSC.

November 2013
www.virtualmarionette.grifu.com

[vimeo 78027358 w=580&h=326]

INVERSUS – artistic installation that explores interaction by using every-day objects

Why should a lamp be used only to illuminate ? … a speaker to play a sound ? ….or a fan to produce wind ?

This every-day objects are used commonly as transmission devices (light, sound and wind).
I knew, before starting this project, that a speaker could be used as a microphone.

My proposal was to find out if a transmission device could be used as a reception device for interaction purposes.

The Lamps (in this case: Leds) where used as light sensors, the speakers (in this case: piezzos) where used as pressure sensors and the fan was used as a blowing sensor.

The main concept of inversus was to invert the meaning of transmission devices into reception devices. A sensitive machine that capture human interaction to produce sound and visual kinetics. A performing instrument that gives life to a mechanic flower that spins when someone blows into the machine producing an animated shadow like in shadow puppetry. There is also a virtual marionette inside the machine that reacts to the pressure of the pads, this marionette is rigged with bones that are mapped to the pads that make them squash and stretch producing animation.
This instrument was made from a washing machine changing the meaning absorbing the spinning metaphor as a mixing machine. To extend the mixing metaphor i used a spinning wheel that creates a hypnotic effect.

Oct.2013
+ info at http://www.grifu.com/vm/?p=883#more-883
or http://www.virtualmarionette.grifu.com/