Lumarca by Matt Parker, Albert Hwang & Elliot Woods.

Created by NYC based coding gurus Matt Parker, Albert Hwang and Elliot Woods, the Lumarca project is an ingenious volumetric display that cleverly weaves the virtual into the real using nothing but yarn, gaffe tape and a projector. Oh and not to mention some pretty cool scripting talent and bucket loads of time.

Although this project may look like a giant screen saver display gone a bit over board, Lumarca is a project appealing to the coding geeks, exhibition designers and new media art enthusiasts amongst us for several reasons. It hints at some pretty exciting technologies and innovations to come in regards to realising the virtual world of technology. We may as well start saying hello to the increasingly holographic future of tomorrow. Matt, an assistant professor of the Arts at the NYU Game Centre, and Albert, who is a front end developer for an email marketing company, were inspired to bridge that gap between the virtual and the real and to go beyond simulation and “make something truly 3D”. Looking to the spatial masters of dance, interior design, theatre and architecture, the Lumarca project not only offers a new platform to tell stories on but also starts to address some really interesting spatial problems in regards to light, time and movement.

I asked both Matt and Albert about the project. Here’s some of what they had to say.

+How do people experience the project?

Matt: Lumarca is a really unique experience, and the reaction we get when we show it is why I continue to work on it. There’s something about the feeling of real 3D content, with perspective, created through glowing lines of light, that is really transformative.
Albert: It’s architecturally very inert with lots of visual tension (just vertical lines), but it’s highly expressive due to the dynamic nature of the digital content on it. The sense of that jaw dropping moment is along the lines of “How can this be so simple yet so other-worldly?” At least that’s my interpretation of the moment.

+What potentials would you say lie within the conceptual framework of Lumarca?

Matt: I think the most interesting conceptual framework for Lumarca is using that 2D computer perspective to recreate a 3D experience in the real world. I believe that based on this same premise, we come that much closer to representational images similar to the holograms we see in science fiction.
Albert: Conceptually, it was and always has been “how do we create digital objects out here?” – and it turns out there are a lot of weird problems to unravel there. How do they relate to the location of the viewer? How do they relate to the space? How big should they be?

Travelling the world in true tech-fashion as open-source code Lumarca has been exhibited in Japan, Mexico, Denmark, Estonia, Canada and many states in the US and is still on the move. Hopefully one day us Aussie’s will get to see it in the flesh. A call to all Yellowtrace Australian coders out there. Come on – this would be so cool to see for real!