Immersive Quadraphonic Installation (2020-2023 Commission)

I was hired by a renowned artist to create an updated version of an immersive installation created in 2011, because the piece hasn’t been displayed in front of an audience, I can’t disclose much information; however, I was authorised to write a review on the project and its technical challenges.

3D animation

This installation was conceived as a 7.5 m long, 2.8 m tall and 2.6 m wide projection mapping set-up, displaying a 5-minute long looping animation with a quadraphonic sound system. The footage was later adapted to run on two LED walls.

The animation was created using Blender 3D software. There were many technical challenges, as it was based on a looping day-night cycle transition that required perfect transition for sound design, fluid simulations, AI Swarn agents for insect simulations and mesh and materials looping animations.

Sound Design

The project required the spatialization of the sound following a quadraphonic arrangement. The final multi-channel file was created by mixing about 200 individual sound files using Reaper, and the ReaSurround plugin was used to map out each audio file into the quadraphonic layout.

AI Upscaling and frame interpolation

The project was originally rendered at a 10592 pixels wide by 1200 pixels tall resolution (8 projector layout), later it was adapted the footage was cropped and then upscaled to create two video files with 5760 pixels wide by 1728 pixels tall resolution. The footage was also interpolated using AI to go from 30 fps to 60 fps (this was a request made almost at the end of the project). The AI software used for this project was Topaz Labs Video Enhance AI