Multiple provides a completely intuitive full body interaction. The audience can send cascades of colour and form around the space.
Multiple uses a Kinect sensor to capture silhouette images which are converted into a series of numbers. The silhouettes are then drawn onto the screen in a huge variety of formations and each silhouette can be stored and delayed building up an ongoing animation.
We developed Multiple for Silent Signal, an Animate Projects and Wellcome Trust commission. Working with Dr Neil Dufton at Imperial College we created a short animation ‘Battle of Blister’ inspired by inflammation. Multiple is our ‘interactive animation generating machine’ and dancers, gymnasts and circus performers helped us recreate a range of biological processes from the microbial events inside a blister to a blood-sucking horse fly.
Since this commission, we have used Multiple in many ways:
- It has appeared in several Microworlds enabling the audience to generate colours and patterns which act as food sources for other creatures.
- We have used the program for live visuals in a clubs and BYOB nights.
- We have run dramatic performances, workshops and drop-ins, where we help people to create their own mini-narratives. An exciting example of this is UpStage our collaboration with Inspiration Inclusive Theatre.
- We even reconfigured the output so it would fit on a 100 foot skyscraper in Hong Kong part of ICC Open Sky exhibition for ISEA 2016 (see video)
- In 2016, Multiple also helped us to win a Kent Creative award in the Audio Visual section
In the future we are planning to network Multiple so people in different spaces can combine their silhouettes in novel ways. This development will be inspired by the pioneering work of Myron Krueger with his Artificial Reality projects.
