Project Description
In 2021, 88rising Creative Director David Jung approached IMMANENT, looking for the right team to provide visuals for their Head in the Clouds Festival. For the 2022 festival, however, Jung tasked the company with creating an interactive rendition of their newly redesigned mascot, “CLO,” who would be displayed on screens, reading curated tweets and safety messages in between sets and grooving to the music while projection-mapped onto inflatable balloons above the main stage.
With such a particular assignment, IMMANENT decided to put their energy into keeping the crowd as engaged as possible. The creative team started by producing a Notch application that extracted tweet data to display in a Notch menu for CLO to read over the PA system. With their application, they could also puppet the mascot’s face animations with an Xbox controller.
IMMANENT used TouchDesigner to play back their Notch Block and reference text strings. After using Microsoft AI to convert text to speech, the team used the resulting waveforms to drive an Alembic animation to open and close the mascot’s mouth. In the end, audience members were able to hear CLO read their words aloud and dance to their favourite tunes in sync with the crowd.
“Notch is an absolute powerhouse when it comes to rapid iterations. Your speed of creation seems only limited by the speed you can click your mouse. I couldn’t fathom a way to deliver this show in the old pre-rendered format with the amount of last-minute changes we saw on location.”
Brenton March, Notch Designer
Additional press coverage:
Asia Pacific Arts, Daily Bruin, The Honey Pop, Uproxx.
Credits
Client: 88rising & Goldenvoice
Production Company: IMMANENT
Production Design: Matt Steinbrenner
Creative Direction: David Jung
Notch Designer: Brenton March
Content Director: Drew Best
Content Producer: Tara LaPlante
Projection Mapping: Leigh Powless & Ben Leonard
VJ Operator: Patrick Wala
AV Assistant: Lillian Raemsch
Lighting Designer: Ricardo Rojas
Screen Producer: Jake Keenan
Animator: Cameron Leahy
CLO Character Creators: Shimn Ng & Yesolyi Kim
Video Equipment: NEP Screenworks
