Work /

Context

Murmur is a multimedia dance work by Aakash Odedra with the choreographer Lewis Major. I wrote the show software and then travelled with it, operating it live on a world tour between 2014 and 2018. I used the same two pieces of code in a new theatre every few weeks.

The problem

The software had to run throughout a performance without stopping to inspect logs or restart the renderer. There were no second takes. The projection surface was a moving dancer, and stage sizes varied between venues. I had one technical rehearsal in each room to get the mapping aligned.

Calibration had to be quick and the results repeatable. If something went wrong, I had to be able to recover it alone from a laptop in a dark theatre, under time pressure.

What I did

• Wrote the multimedia rendering software for the piece (MurmurRenderer).
• Built the floor tracking (MurmurFloorTracking), so the visuals respond to the performer's position instead of following a fixed timeline.
• Set up and tuned the projection mapping at each venue, and drove the show live through the run.
• Kept the whole thing running on tour hardware for years.

Stack & notes

C++ · OpenGL · floor tracking.

Related repositories: MurmurRenderer, MurmurFloorTracking, SpiritWorld.

• computer-vision
• real-time