I’ve been looking for a way to do this for some time and FINALLY have made some headway. I’ve wanted to re-create the effects of a projector within Blender. These, as many of my tests are, are very simple and have no conceptual framework. These is proof of process and essential for me to look back at how my skills in this area have progressed.

Looking at the work I’ve done throughout the MA, the impact of the screen and device on the user is an essential element. This interaction between you the physical and what the device presents, the digital has been a perfect example of the imbalance between these polar opposites. I felt that I best achieved this through my work at Digital Meze, especially as it seemed to sum up a lot of images I had created beforehand that focused on the user and the television, or computer monitor.

‘Monitor’ projected a live stream of BBC News into an altered CRT Television to highlight the complexity of misinformation in the news. Using live news feeds in my work has been an interest of mine for some time, and although this conceptually worked, however the way in which it was presented through ‘Monitor’ wasn’t quite what I’d hoped.

In these tests, I’ve textured spot lights with images and increased the emission value to create the effect. I’ve tested this with screen captured videos of live news feeds but the render time is slow, and will take a while to display the examples. Whether its possible to stream a live news feed within this is not yet known but it feels as if its a crucial step to execute further work.

BLENDER’s CYCLES, UNITY + THREE.JS:

The Cycles render engine is notoriously difficult to run properly in THREE.JS, and similarly, in Unity. Baking the textures into UV wraps is really the only way forward. This is very possible to produce systems and works with still images of media but including videos or lives streams is a different ball park. It seems possible that if the light source in a Python engine such as Blender can be texturised, a light source in Javascript could be used similarly. I’m yet to establish this though it doesn’t seem impossible.

TEST IMAGES: