Conglomerate Distortions
  Sala Wong & Peter Williams
  Explorations of globalized spectacle using panoptic photography

Stereoscopic version displayed on IQ Wall, IU Bloomington Wells Library
April 2015

ABSTRACT
Conglomerate Distortions is a series of immersive animations that explore how we recalibrate ourselves to globalized, conglomerate realities, and how the notion of "immediate surroundings" is changing in the age of augmented reality and locative media. Together, Sala Wong and Peter Williams visit international sites of heightened spectacle and each document their surroundings using omnidirectional cameras, which make selective and conventional framing of scenes impossible. This individualized yet parallel act of documentation cleaves a series of dizzying composite spaces and perspectives when the images are edited and locations are combined within composite, virtual 3D spaces.

The latest version of the project, seen above in a successful test at Indiana University Bloomington's IQ Wall, uses a stereoscopic display.

ARTIST STATEMENT
We each move throughout the earth within our own sensorial and perceptual spheres. Our experiences continually overlap and exchange with those of other people and within digital, aggregated streams of information. As they reshape our environments, forces such as technology and globalized trade complicate our basic means of negotiating everyday life. In the midst of these conglomerations, individuals must recurrently recalibrate their senses and psyches.

We may use maps and identify specific locations, but lived experience defies pinpointing. Even first-person mapping projects such as Google Street View and Michael Naimarks’ Aspen Movie Map imply discreteness and a plausible “here and now.” Conglomerate Distortions aims to use similar omnidirectional photographic techniques in complex and hybridized ways. Usually lacking viewfinders, omnidirectional cameras make the ocular-centrist notions of framing and landscape impossible; what triggers such an image is the photographer’s proprioception and embodied sense of place. Furthermore, the collaborative practice of artists Sala Wong and Peter Williams to travel together and document their experiences with two such cameras at once turns the picture-making process into a sort of conversation: an individualized and yet parallel process of documentation. The project has thus far focused on sites in Asia: Osaka, Tateyama, Taipei and Hong Kong. These places thrive through reinvention: as one means of existence reaches its completion, a new one is improvised in its place. As the artists travel the world, they expect new recombinant orders to emerge in their imagery.

The hybridity of Conglomerate Distortions is further complicated in post-production. The artists combine their photographs without note of individual authorship or geographic location. Images from multiple cities are composited together and juxtaposed within animated virtual spheres. Displayed at large scale using stereoscopic displays, the result is a dizzying and immersive spectacle of spectacles.

            Monoscopic, dual-channel projection installation-based version as presented in the juried, internationally-traveling 2014 Lumen Prize Exhibition
Official selection, 2014 Lumen Prize Exhibition (juried)
    Lumen in London, The Crypt Gallery, May, 2015
    Lumen at ARt’otel Amsterdam, January, 2015
    Auditorium on Broadway, New York City, Dec, 2014
    Lumen Prize Highlights, Canary Wharf, London, Nov, 2014
    Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens, Oct, 2014
    Cardiff School of Art and Design, Oct 2014

TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION
The project was first conceived for the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association) Science on a Sphere. Two Ricoh Theta cameras were used. “Selfie sticks” permitted the artists to freely experiment while also mitigating the presence of the photographer’s hand in handheld omnidirectional photography. Two Apple iPhone 4S’s with Ricoh Theta apps were used as shutter releases.

Adobe Photoshop CS6 was used to extract areas of interest from the images. Care was taken so that, when recombining elements from one spherical image into another, the spherical distortion would resolve in a consistently. This imposed limitations on the positions at which elements could be placed within overall compositions, but such limitations are in the spirit of the project’s concepts.

Five completed Conglomerate Distortions were composed using X3D. In each, individual image layers were UV mapped onto individual spheres. The spheres were created at slightly different sizes and animated in rotation at slightly different speeds. Since the UV maps are visible on both sides of a sphere’s surface, a virtual camera can be positioned inside or outside, giving different viewing relationships. The virtual camera cycles between ten X3D viewpoints.

Conglomerate Distortions has been displayed using several different devices. The first iterations of the project were shown monoscopically using the NOAA Science on a Sphere projection system at Indiana University’s Cyberinfrastructure Building. An installation-based version, also monoscopic, was included in the internationally-traveling 2014 Lumen Prize Exhibition. This version used dual-channel projection. The newest version, proposed for ASIA SIGGRAPH 2015, is stereoscopic and uses either projection or panel 3D display. A successful test of this stereoscopic version was conducted in April 2015 using Indiana University Bloomington’s IQ Wall (a passive 3D, multichannel, 5464X3072 electronic display wall located in the Wells Library).

© 2015 Sala Wong & Peter Williams