The 3-D Light Show You Can Control With an iPad or Wii

There was a time when concertgoers were perfectly happy just listening to the band play. Not anymore. Today’s music fan expects to see pyrotechnic spectacles with elaborate lighting and special effects for the price of concert admission. Even house-party hosts are downloading trippy screensavers that change in time to the music. When the time came to create the visuals for Floating — a new album by Danish electronic artist Rumpistol / Red Baron — design studio Futura Epsis 1 made something that was a bit of both.

Floating’s live show features a hypnotic 3-D display, controlled by an iPad app, that you can download for your home. The idea is that the show can be projected anywhere — from large arenas to living rooms. “We came up with the idea of a realtime 3-D sound-visualization as an installation for concerts and live-events as well as interactive installation for clubs,” says Andreas Rothaug, Head of Development Futura Epsis 1.

The set of visuals and fluid simulations, are generated in realtime, and driven by the sounds coming into the computer. The multitouch iPad allows a performer to manipulate the images and effects on the big screen, or to switch between scenes.

Floating’s visuals are designed to be used anywhere. Though the app as released is for iOS, Rothbaug says that behind the scenes the tech is radically multi-platform. For instance, visuals can be split into a stereoscopic effect, and then rendered for red/blue, shutter, or polarization-based 3-D glasses, depending on what viewing the audience will have.

The app can be controlled by virtually any device. “The control protocol of the visuals is OSC (like the network version of MIDI), creating the option of controlling the visuals with a variety of controllers,” he says. “For example directly out of Ableton Live, MIDI controllers in general.” This opens up the possibility of ditching the iPad and taking control with even more exotic interfaces like BMI (brain-machine Interfaces) or a Wii controller.

(via WIRED)

Download on floating-away.com and in the iOS AppStore.
Projectpage: futura-epsis1.com/project/Floating