technology

Antigone uses a combination of video and text data to enhance on-stage action and to allow the audience a channel of participation through the SMS capabilities of their mobile phones.

Video was captured live from the auditorium by two cameramen and fed into two near-identical linux boxes. There the footage was processed before being passed video to a mixing desk which sent the data to three ceiling-mounted projectors pointed at simple gauze/cloth projection surfaces.

The interesting bits happened inside the two linux machines. Two fantasitc projects allowed us to apply effects in realtime to the incoming video data, mix it with pre-prepared footage, apply an enormous variety of filters and effects before outputting it smoothly. They are EffecTV and Veejay. We'd like to thank all those involved in their development. Check them out.

Text messages come to us via our SMS gateway at Palm Media who inserted the messages into a MySql database where they are collected by a Perl/Tk application which allowed us to respond to messages individually, project them onto the set in a chatroom style, keep track of audience votes and send SMS messaes to the whole audience.

For the curious: Our systems are all based on Slackware 9.0 running on Athlon XP processors. We use Matrox G550 and G200MMS graphics cards for output and hauppage wintvgo cards for camera capture.

If you've got any questions about all this, have similar projects cooking, or want to get involved just get in touch...