A live act in one take. No digital effects. But packed with optical illusions and old school camera tricks, to highlight Stockholm - The Capital of Scandinavia - by D1gits (Charlie Caper and Erik Rosales):

About the project

Our concept was to create an experience for a live audience where they can follow the process of our creation and simultaneously view the result filmed in real time on a screen next to the stage. To make the filming dynamic and cinematic we used a 4K camera to zoom and pan digitally. The camera was attached to an arduino-controlled robot arm. We used a new Mac Pro as the main brain, which talked to an Arduino Ethernet that controlled servos and the robotic arm. The Arduino chip also communicated via LANC to control the focus of the lens. The video from the camera was streamed back to the Mac Pro and captured in to Resolume Arena. QLab is the brain and makes sure everything syncs up - play the send keystrokes and other apple script messages, play the backtrack, sync with our own iOS server system, control the servos etc. It communicates via osc with the Arduino chip to control motors and the camera. Each Compositions in Vezér has been triggered from QLab.

Playing and trial and error are huge parts of the process. There are various interesting ideas we had to abandon either because they didn't work technically, they didn't fit into the story, or they simply didn't come out the way we wanted them to. The story we want to tell and the technical limitations (and possibilities) rule the process. Vezér has been the core program for us to achieve the live experience for the audience. Combined with Resolume Arena it can pan around in 4K pixel space so that we can focus on a specific part of our scenery.

Cardboard sketches to get a quick image of the result of an effect. Early stage.

Hand on try out of green fluid through plastic tube to get an idea of the effect.

Live example of us performing the final act in front of a audience.

View of the process behind the scenes that the audience get to experience live.

We had lots of ideas from the beginning, this is one idea that was never used in the final act.

About the artist

D1gits (Charlie Caper and Erik Rosales):

We both have a background from street performance. Charlie is a well know magician and also a former programmer within computer games. Erik is a media performer who works a lot with audience interaction and stage performance. Both of us are self taught within the field of technology and arts. We believe that our backgrounds are our key in finding playful ideas to work with content, technology and creativity.

Web: http://d1gits.com