The 6th of March marked our first test with the mirrors. We booked the room AG0.7 and came to Uni fairly early in the day. We all brought a number of mirrors and other miscellaneous reflective things from our homes and rooms, such as the doorknobs that Lara purchased. I brought 2 mirrors from my house; a two-sided circular (make-up?) mirror, where one of the sides was curved inwards, and I also brought a circular mirror with a handle and the cover for it, which also had a mirror inside of it. Other mirrors we had were large rectangular ones, small rectangular ones, medium sized rectangular ones, some other circular ones, and Lara also brought in a very small mirror that was cracked.
We brought 2 projectors (mainly because we only had 2 laptops to plug into them) from Ed’s office to use in the room, and there were plug sockets on two ends of the room, so we could make use of them on both of the large walls on opposite sides of each other. One of the walls had a paper backdrop, and the other was simply plain, while the two on the sides of the room were not too suitable, as one had black felt curtains (very poorly) covering the windows over the entire span of the wall, while the other was too messy, crowded, and not flat enough.
We started off by testing out one of the projectors on the wall with the paper backdrop. We set up the tables so that there would be two sets of two tables back to back, and we placed one projector on the table closest to the wall, facing away from the wall, while we placed a number of mirrors on the other table facing the projector / wall and tilted upwards to reflect onto the backdrop. We plugged a laptop into the projector with a VGA cable, found a random music video on YouTube and put it on loop, and below should be a couple snippets of the results:
As shown above, the tests worked out relatively well, not that the video does it much justice. Fears that the projectors and mirrors may compromise visual quality were quickly dashed aside, as the quality remained just as clear projected and reflected onto the backdrop, regardless of angle. With the mirrors, we could change their angles and direction while the video was still playing to make a portion of an image move across the walls. It was rather cool, and the use of mirrors definitely had a lot of potential. There were some slight problems regarding the backdrop, as due to it being paper, there were a few creases here and there that didn’t look too nice, and due to the unfortunate curtains, which were half hanging off the wall pathetically, a lot of light ended up being let in through the windows anyways, leaving the projections looking rather muted and not as visible as it would in complete darkness. There should be a few images from these early tests below:
Next, we decided to bring the other projector into use. It had the same set up as the other one, and by using 2 projectors, we could increase the coverage of the projectors across the walls, leaving much less dead space and having a much more visually interesting / busy presentation. Below should be some more images and videos of when we began using two projectors:
Afterwards, we had a break. Lara contacted Ed to see if he could get someone to fix and remount the curtains back onto the walls, and it was fixed while we were having our break. We came back to the room to find the curtains actually serving their purpose, and the room was much darker as a result. We also decided to switch to the other side of the room, with the plain and flat wall, to project there instead. We found this much easier, considering we had a larger space to work with (compared to the paper backdrop of much smaller width, and curtain behind it that rendered projections barely visible), and a more undisturbed surface. We had the entire wall to play around with, and we made the most of it. We tried to spread out all of the projections further across the wall to fill up any blank space, and tried to not have areas as bunched up as they were before. We also tried to include more mirrors into this test, which did make things a bit more difficult as mirrors were now in front of other mirrors, or mirrors were slipping and falling and such, which made things a little more difficult to deal with, but the payoff was rather worth it, as the larger plain wall, the use of two projectors, the added mirrors, and the darker room, all lead to a massive improvement in the presentation. The images were more spread out, and more of the wall could be filled, and the projections were much more visible and stood out more due to the darkness. Pictures should be below:
We did note that the glare from the projectors and mirrors was rather distracting, and tried to figure out if there was a way that we could remove, or at least lessen, the glare. We found a large board of sorts behind the curtains in the room that we moved and flipped over the lie on it’s edge, and it managed to be just the size that bit managed to cover up most of the glare and surplus reflections travelling in unintended directions, while not obscuring the main projections on the wall. We considered that maybe this could be used in the real thing, but we aren’t too sure if people would be sitting down, standing up, how the board would be made to stay upright without anyone holding it, if we’ll even use the board in the end, or if we’ll even stick to this layout.
As today was merely a test, we don’t know if how much we’ll stick to this layout when the time comes. We didn’t use any of our own footage (as we don’t really have any yet), and we are considering if we should use a third projector, and we need to figure out how to have all the mirrors we may use to be kept consistent and still, without sliding and falling all the time. We also need to consider if the placement of the mirrors / projections on the wall will be specifically placed and position for whatever reason. We were really just trying to see if projecting onto mirrors looked good, rather than creating a set up that we will use in the final presentation, as we obviously aren’t far enough progress-wise to be thinking about it. Overall, the mirrors looked really good, and there is a lot we can do with this. We aren’t sure how close we’ll stick to today’s set up in the end, since we aren’t sure how much our ideas will develop between now and then, and if the placement of all this stuff will matter by then, or even if we’ll be using mirrors by the end of it. We’ll also need to make sure that the room is sufficiently dark, and what parts of the room will end up being used or occupied. We’ll probably need to do some more tests in the future, after our ideas have developed sufficiently enough to know what we actually want to do, rather than just going in blind like we did today.
Transcendence 