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Lorem Distrusts Everything, and lets BenQ take care of it
- BenQ
- 2022-11-15
Overview
The Issue
Lorem is an aesthetic inquiry in the modern human-computer interaction, it relies on audiovisual installations and live performances to immerse the visitors in the work. For the Distrust Everything Project, Francesco D'Abbraccio and Karol Sudolski faced a new technical challenge as the project was to be installed in the small apse of the former Church of Santi Cosma and Damiano.
The Solution
Lorem reached out to the BenQ Italy team and based on their needs, the choice was made to go for the LU9800 with lenses LS1ST3A. It was the only way to achieve a comfortable, high-contrast immersive room with the small and irregular dimensions of the church. The projectors feature ultra-high brightness, superb image quality, and enduring performance, ensuring visitors an enjoyable immersive experience.
The Result
Visitors and curators alike stepped into an ancient Venetian church and entered a psychedelic dream. By incorporating the glass wall of the church into the exhibition structure, BenQ Italia team and Francesco D'Abbraccio were able to let the audiovisual installation engage visitors in a hallucinatory dream realised through Artificial Intelligence systems.
Facts at a Glance
Year of Completion
2022
BenQ Solutions
Large Venue Projector LU9800 paired with LS1ST3A lenses
Segment
Exhibition
Location
Venice, Italy
Project
To help the visitors engage in an immersive audiovisual experience during their visit.
About Lorem
Lorem is the transmedia project of the visual artist, musician and independent researcher Francesco D'Abbraccio. Through the use of neural networks, CGI and digital technologies, he designs audiovisual environments with a strong narrative connotation. With ongoing collaboration, Lorem's identity oscillates between the individual dimension and the collective experience. For the Distrust Everything Project, Francesco D'Abbraccio and Karol Sudolski teamed up to investigate the relationship between human and algorithmic unconscious starting from an intense and perturbing aesthetic experience.
Inside the seventeenth-century apse of the former Church of Santi Cosma and Damiano, on the Giudecca island, generative neural systems analyze an archive that collects 21 years of dreams transcriptions of Mirek Amendant Hardiker, an American artist and former researcher at Stanford. Starting from these dreams, the system elaborates a radically new dream, building the screenplay for the entire installation.
When technology supports art
For the work to be displayed as intended, it needs an immersive room, in which projections and electronic compositions surround the visitor and isolate them from the external space. The realism of the images, created with 3D photogrammetry and neural networks, acts as a counterpoint to the ambiguous surrealism of the story. When they realized that the Church of Santi Cosma and Damiano was going to represent a challenge, the Lorem team contacted BenQ Italy.
"The most difficult challenge was the installation of the projectors. Given the small and irregular dimensions of the church, it was necessary to carry out a precision work with the optics, in which we were brilliantly assisted by the BenQ Italy team" says Francesco D'Abbraccio from Lorem.
BenQ was happy not only to help with technical support and professional lasers, but the BenQ Italy team also thought alongside Francesco to ensure a proper immersion in the work: “The nature of the space required some site-specific solution: to incorporate the glass wall of the church into the exhibition structure it was necessary to eliminate the fourth wall of the immersive room. Particular attention was also paid to the synchronization of the signal between the screens, which was facilitated by the excellent response of the BenQ optics."
"A VR immersive experience forces people to quite literally see through another set of eyes."
BenQ Large Venue Projector LU9800 paired with LS1ST3A lenses turned out to be the ideal solution to bring the psychedelic dreams to the 17th-century church.
The LU9800 projector is compatible with multiple electrical optional lenses to maximize throw ratio coverage. This allowed for the LS1ST3A, a short-throw lens to be used for this project.
Another reason that made the large-venue projector a winning choice was the large 2D Keystone allowing to easily correct for vertical projector tilt, or if the projector is not square to the screen which was the case in the narrow apse of the church.
“The three projectors, despite the limited space and the difficulties in making a particular environment such as an ancient Venetian church completely dark, ensured a high contrast and a great definition. The mirroring floor also increased the scenic effect of the screens, enhancing the visitor's feeling of disorientation" explained Francesco D'Abbraccio by Lorem. Technology, Art and Artificial intelligence came together to make the Distrust Everything Project, an experience from another world.
