https://www.snapchat.com/sps-2020
Snap Inc. held the live stream of its Snap Partner Summit on June 11, 2020.
Apple's Steve Jobs may have set a precedent for technology presentations that are still being followed to this day but the Snap Partner Summit 2020, which took place virtually, explored new possibilities. As the in-person summit was cancelled due to COVID, Snap created a dynamic presentation with interesting visuals, plenty of color, animated avatars and theatrics to keep viewers engaged. The virtual keynote presentation opened with an artful, two-minute silent video of a spinning sun in Snap's bright brand color.
The large yellow sun also plays a part in setting the stage, serving as the backdrop for the Snap keynote presentation, along with a sky filled with palm trees. At one point in the presentation, the presenter for Bitmoji for Games even turns into a Bitmoji in his own likeness.
The virtual event featured a keynote address by Snap Inc. co-founders Evan Spiegel, Chief Executive Officer, and Bobby Murphy, Chief Technology Officer, and other team members from across the company. New product features and partnerships were announced around Snap's augmented reality offerings, Discover content platform, developer and creator ecosystems, and more. Video breakout sessions which go deeper on these topics will be made publicly available following the conclusion of the keynote.
“We deeply value our partners and the role they play in empowering our community to express themselves, live in the moment, learn about the world, and have fun together. We’re looking forward to celebrating our partners and sharing more about the future of the products and platforms that we’ve been building together,” said Evan Spiegel.
Today, Snap’s partners have expanded to include storytellers, publishers, tech entrepreneurs, augmented reality creators, brands, and more, each of whom bring their experiences, talents, and stories to life across Snap’s platforms.
Steve Jobs was famous for his Apple keynotes. Snap just topped him
Light Harvest has used its platform at LUMA to explore the impact of intimate, emotive dance performance on the sometimes sterile art of architectural projection. The resulting mix is a startlingly resonant exploration of the human experience with all the punch of larger-than-life spectacle. The Awakening illustrates through metaphor and movement how ambition, so often seen as critical to success, can just as easily drive us away from everything we need to flourish. It’s about all the ways we’ve distanced ourselves from the natural world and a culture that makes us increasingly reticent to turn inward when there may be no other way to find that which we most desperately seek.
Created by
Light Harvest Studio
www.lightart.tv
Written and Directed by
Ryan Uzilevsky
Executive Produced by
LUMA Festival
Lead Animators
Tom Bourguet
Josh Slaby
Compositing and Editing
Ryan Uzilevsky
Choreographer and Co - Writer
Alison Clancy
With Performances by
Jay Don
Chelsea Hemsworth
Lauren Stucko
Alison Clancy
Sound Designer
Brandon Wollcott
MoCap Technical Director
Todd Bryant
MoCap Studio Assistant
Asha Veeraswamy
Character Animator's
Joe Mandia
Han Hu
Additional Modeling
Bill Mata
Alexander Allaux
Illustrator
Adrian Rasmussen
Production Assistant
Mike Miller
Editing and Color Grading
Tice Learner
Music:
Laurie Anderson - Oh Superman (Jashua Hagen Remix)
The 2018 Pharos experience, which combined custom lighting, smoke, a laser show, and a mesmerizing visual experience projected onto the dome’s interior in real time, not only blew away fans but won the team a prestigious VES Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Special Venue Project in February, 2019.
Projections on the First National Bank
Light Harvest Studio
www.lightart.tv
A projection mapping multimedia piece at the intersection of dance theater, installation, and music video. This original work weaves a narrative about the human struggle between truth and fiction. The story centers on two lovers as they are challenged by society and by each other, to search for the often hidden truths in the age of information. Together they seek to reveal the messages often hidden beneath the surface of our modern world, as information and miss-information overwhelm their senses.
This original work was commissioned by the LUMA Projection Art Festival for the facade of the First National Bank in Binghamton, New York.
Featuring choreography and performance by "Creelo Moves" (Movement artists Laura and Christopher Grant, from Broadway's King Kong)
In collaboration with Eko and M ss ng P eces we ported the first 4 episodes of #Wargames to a gaze-controlled VR experience which premiered at Tribeca Virtual Arcade
Blooming highlights the importance of presence and physical connection in our lives.
While our digital, globalized world allows us to always stay connected, what is lost when our most meaningful relationship are mediated through screens? Drawing on research from developmental psychology on the importance of touch to human well-being, Park questions how a lack of physical contact and in-person interactions might contribute to feeling of loss, alienation, dissociation, and melancholy.
"Blooming" is an audio-visual interactive installation that responds to physical contact between two to three participants, which takes the form of a life-size Cherry Blossom tree, a common symbol of social ties and the transience of life in East Asian culture. When participants stand before the tree and hold hands or embrace by measuring their heart-rates, gestures, and skin-to-skin contacts, the projection of the tree will flourish in peak bloom; when they release, it will collapse into its pre-bloomed state. The colors of the cherry blossom flowers change based on the participants' heart-rates while they are interacting each other. (faster the heart beats, redder the colors & slower the heart beats, whiter the colors).
When a cherry blossom tree flourishes, as it does in "Blooming", it is a reminder of human relationships at their peak.
Light Harvest Studio
www.lightart.tv
In this 3D projection mapped narrative film, we explore a young girls imagination as she becomes inspired by her aging grandfathers thoughts on the future.
The story is inspired by how an older generation can inspire a new generation, even when they are not around to see what transpires.
This original work was commissioned by the LUMA Projection Art Festival for the facade of the First National Bank in Binghamton, New York.
Featuring choreography and performance by ODNA , creative collaborator for the dancing scene: odnaexperience.com
Performance capture technology wielded by our tech partner and resident guru, Todd Bryant: toddjbryant.com
Created and Directed by Ryan Uzilevsky
Lead Animation Tom Bourguet
Animation Josh Crews
Tech Director Todd Bryant
Choreography, Performer, and Creative
Collaborator Olga Dobrowolska
Modeling + Special Effects Sam Roe
Illustrator Danny Darkoski
Live Video Shoot Justone Bossert
The Principles of Uncertainty is a new evening-length dance theater work created by collaborators John Heginbotham (Choreographer) and Maira Kalman (Visual Artist/Designer). The work draws inspiration from the highly detailed, intimate worlds created in Maira’s paintings and illustrations, particularly from her book, The Principles of Uncertainty (2009). The piece is based on John and Maira’s shared interest in the passage of time and its relation to the seemingly mundane objects and experiences that make up our daily lives. A central theme of the work is a human’s experience as a temporary participant in an ever-changing world. These ideas and themes are explored through a series of vignettes that are woven through with John’s rich choreography and Maira’s design elements. An array of eclectic vocabularies - dance, text, music, and projected images - work in concert to tell the story. The intention is that The Principles of Uncertainty behaves as a welcoming, non-linear, occasionally absurd travelogue.
Composer and musician Colin Jacobsen composed, arranged, and curated music for the work and the cast features six members of Dance Heginbotham, the actor Daniel Pettrow, a quartet of musicians, and Maira herself.
World Premiere: Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival August 23 - 27, 2017
New York Premiere: BAM Next Wave Festival September 27 - 30, 2017
Asheville, NC: Diana Wortham Theater, presented by Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, March 16-17, 2018
Durham, NC: Reynolds Industries Theater, presented by Duke Performances, March 23-24, 2018
Plovdiv, Bulgaria: SPOTLIGHT:USA - A Platform of American Dance in Bulgaria, March 28, 2018
Inspired by the tradition of celebrating with the spirits during Dia de los Muertos, Sensorium brought the spirits to life through an art installation that included interactive projections that allowed the audience to control realtime projections of an animated skeleton through their bodily movements, a holographic projection featuring a La Catrina character and other looped animations derived from original illustrations by Llew Mejia, and motion-captured dancers driving realtime projections of animated characters.
NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism (NSAF) is an award winning three-part digital narrative that sits at the intersection product design, virtual reality, and neuroscience. Inspired by the lack of multidimensional representations of black women in technology. The NSAF products range from sunblock for traveling through the multiverse, to earrings embedded with cameras that offer protection and visibility, the vr experience is set in a Neurocosmetology lab where black women are pioneering techniques of brain optimization and cognitive enhancement. Finally, scientific research exploring the neurological and physiological impact of showing images of empowered black women as well as content made for and by women of color.
NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism (NSAF) is a cross-platform project grounded in several applications of technology including product design, virtual reality (VR), and social-psychological/cognitive impact/biometric/fMRI research. Our core technology explores parallax and real-time rendering inside of Unreal4-a game engine software framework-to create a active audio/visual virtual reality experience. Embodiment is augmented with the Oculus Sensor tracker and headset to allow for room scale immersion and positional feedback. VR is the immersive platform that transports our viewers into a NeuroCosmetology lab, a reimagined black hair salon, placing the viewer into a black woman’s body giving a glimpse into a speculative future of black women pioneering brain research and neuromodulation through the culturally specific ritual of haircare.
NSAF has been shown at Sundance Film Fest, SXSW, Tribeca Film Fest (Jury Honorable Mention), Gray Area Art & Technology Festival, Primer Speculative Futures Conference, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Stony Island Arts Bank & Rebuild Foundation, New Inc: Versions Festival, Refinery 29's 29 Rooms.
Baron Samedi, the guardian of all things enchantingly dark, invites you to his world. The Baron Samedi augmented reality app transforms your mobile device into a portal to the spirit realm, giving you the power to see the world through Baron Samedi’s eyes.
Using your Baron Samedi coasters, watch the six characters that form the Baron’s inner circle perform a ritual to summon the support and strength of the Baron, and attempt to win your favor.
To get started, download the Baron Samedi coasters at http://www.baronsamedi.com/assets/pdf/coasters.pdf.
*This app is for those of legal drinking age. The Baron forbids the sharing of our content with anyone under legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly.
Features:
• Characters appear around coaster and interact in three unique ways
• Hold your mobile device closer to the table to get a better look at each character
• The red light indicates the coaster is in play
• Hidden features include touching the screen to make night fall
• Introduce more than one coaster to see other characters appear
• Bring the coasters together to trigger a ritual with all characters
• Hit ‘selfie mode’ and hold the Coaster to your face to reveal your hidden nature
• Capture a pic and share with #FearNot or follow the Baron on Instagram and Facebook to reap his rewards.
FISTFUL OF STARS is the world’s first Virtual Reality exploration of the cosmos alongside the Hubble Telescope that transports you inside of the Orion Nebula and reveals the cosmic connections between humans and the stars.
World Premiere at SXSW 2017
Light Harvest Studio
www.lightart.tv
We had two weeks to plan and execute a four city mobile projection campaign for HBO's hit show.
The end result was a series of pop-up multimedia performances in New York, Philadelphia, LA, and San Francisco.
For mobility and flexibility we mounted our projection turret on moving vehicles and controlled the Dragon animations with a real time video game engine driven by a gamepad, which allowed us realtime control of the dragon in 3D no matter how or where we were projecting him flying.
Client: Katie Bowman from Rubik Marketing
Director / Producer / Concept by : Ryan Uzilevsky
Line Producers: Dusting Highbridge, Tony Monschini
Animation Director / Software Developer: Todd Bryant
Projectionists: Brandon Epperson, Josh James
Animator: Carmine Laietta V
Fabricator: Eric Coolidge
In "Giant," creator Milica Zec draws upon her experience growing up in war-torn Serbia.
Trapped in their basement inside an active war zone, two parents struggle to distract their young daughter by inventing a fantastical tale as bomb blasts draw closer.
A virtual reality experience inspired by real events.
The Return pioneers a dynamic form of storytelling. For this piece, Farrington fuses the strengths of scripted drama with new technology to animate the complex history of Tullio Lombardo’s Adam (on display in the gallery). An actor backstage controls a digital avatar that interacts with visitors in the gallery to enliven episodes in the sculpture’s life, from its commission and meaning in the Renaissance Venice, to its movement across Europe and the Atlantic in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to its damage in 202 and repair over the following years.
The innovative combination of theater with motion-capture and digital animation allows a single actor to engage with the audience and switch between characters including the biblical figure of Adam, an engineered model of the sculpture that aided its restoration, and the marble sculpture itself.
Light Harvest Studio
www.lightart.tv
Simple Creatures is a 3D projection mapped narrative piece utilizing the facade of Sydney University in conjunction with Finely Tuned's "VIVID - Path to the Future" exhibition.
Artist Statement:
The piece unfolds in a conceptual triptych narrative about the human quest for, and ultimate separation from, materialistic obsession. Silhouetted individuals find themselves challenged by realms of illusion and truth. These realms are represented by the transforming features of the University building's iconic, towering facade.
Designed and Directed by; Ryan Uzilevsky
3D Animation: Todd Bryant
Currated by: Joe Cobra Crossley
Narration: Alan Watts
Performers:
Anya Sapozhnikova
Elan Jarof
Akil Davis
Poetry N Motion NYC
Ryan Uzilevsky
Sound Design:
Ryan Uzilevsky
Aerial Photography:
Brooklyn Flying Squirrel
Light Harvest Studio
www.lightart.tv
"The Illusionarium" is a critically acclaimed, immersive theatrical show onboard one of the world's largest cruise ships, The NCL "Getaway"
We were tasked with designing and installing a planetarium style Full Dome video system, the first of its kind to sail the high seas.
The dome was an integral part of the show's narration. Positioned directly above the audience, it functioned a time machine and all-seeing galactic portal that transported the audience through time and space.
With Ryan Uzilevsky acting as director of a small team of VFX artists, we produced over 14 minutes of 4k by 4k Full Dome CGI animation for the dome, as well as HD content for 12 large flat screen monitors around the theater space.
We also engineered and installed the full dome projection and playback system using a proprietary video mapping technique with the support of Pandora's Box media servers and custom DLP projectors.
The show was written and directed by Tony award nominee Patty Wilcox, and production designed by Tony award winner David Gallo.
Major challenges included creating a projection alignement system that could survive inclement weather in both the Engilsh Channel and the Caribbean Sea, and working with a multi-lingual build crew on location in Bremerhaven Germany.
Light Harvest Studio
www.lightart.tv
Light Harvest Studio
www.lightart.tv
Light Harvest Studio was excited to work with Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) and Mayor Bloomberg’s media initiative - ‘Made in NY’ to orchestrate and produce their vision of a fully integrated media center located in Dumbo, Brooklyn.
Working directly with MESH architects from the early stages of the project and insuring seamless integration, we installed a permanent multi-screen system consisting of 8 mapped and edge blended projectors making up a seamless 9024 × 800 image. Along with 27 seamless LCD panels with combined resolution of 5760x1080.
The newly constructed IFP media center will enable both film and digital arts to be experienced in this expanded format, where the walls are able to live and breathe with cinematic reality, as complex or simple as an ever changing pattern of thought.
The installation is driven by a back-end network of custom designed and built media sever computers.
The system includes live capture capabilities that can display any digital or analog source in real time.
The media center is a state of the art think tank and business hive for creative new media. It has been created as a facility for filmmakers, storytellers, transmedia professionals and enthusiasts. Complete with a café, screening room, studios and offices.
We are also involved in the ongoing development of custom content with IFP, helping curate and guide their experience with this powerful tool.
Light Harvest Studio
www.lightart.tv
Hired by ADM Productions we were challenged to project on a 14 foot tall piece of agricultural machinery for a product reveal.
The large amount of complex shapes making up the tractor was more complex than a typical automotive video mapping reveal. We were able to create some great scripted effects on the body of the tractor and the backdrop, creating the illusion that the tractor drove across the country and than shot into space.
The product reveal culminated with a pyrotechnic explosion and a giant kabuki drop, which unveiled the brands entire line of commercial grade tractors awaiting back stage.
Special thanks to Anthony DeMartino for his great project idea and his great staff at ADM Productions!
Technical Director / Artist
Ryan Uzilevsky
Creative Producer / Sound Design
Todd Bryant
Production Company
AMD Productions
Animation
David Lobser - 3D texture
Kamil Nawratil - Animation
Pedro Galvao - Matte Painter
Francois Mallory - 3D Cleanup
