User Preferences: A Tech Q&A With PROJEKTIL

Each week we chat about the tools of the trade with one outstanding creative to find out exactly how they do what they do. The questions are always the same, the answers, not so much. This week: PROJEKTIL.

The Creators Project: Who are you and what do you do?
PROJEKTIL: We are Roman Beranek, projection and interaction designer and founder; Jonas Staub, cameraman, passionate VJ and skilled cutter; Martin Fröhlich (aka mayBites) who’s a media artist and free inventor. As tailors of light, we’re bringing emotional experiences to narrative structure and creating interactive research via site specific light experiences. We want to fascinate, transform and enchant. Our passion for the interplay of light, colour, form and music is our compelling desire to redefine the existing perception of projection and interaction design. The ultimate goal is for the technology to be invisible. We create magic, wonder and an emotional impact/connection between people. Not necessarily between the audience and the system, but between people themselves via the technology.

What hardware do you use?
Macs and PCs, beamers , cameras, green screens for production, smart phones, iPads, cameras and the Kinect as a sensor.

What software do you use?
Final Cut, After Effects, CINEMA 4D, Maya, Blender, Max/MSP, Reason, Modul8.

If money were no object, how would you change your current setup?
I would expand the team. Invest more in research and development and take more time for storytelling. And emulate a huge studio where we could rebuild all the possible objects in order to concoct new ideas and concepts.

mlove interactive projection where users use mobile phones as “brushes”

What fantasy piece of technology would you like to see invented?
I’d love to see some daylight beamers and holography—this would expand our operation field immensely. Both technologies will come and I’m already looking forward to transferring them into art to make them experiencable. Beaming would just be comfortable, that’s what I always think when I’m on a plane. Also a machine where you can experience the recorded experience of somebody else would be awesome, because then people could learn through the experience of others.

Is there a piece of technology that changed your life or inspired you?
Technology’s always inspired me to tell stories and produce pictures starting with the Super 8 and photo cameras. DIA [slide] projectors and PANI projectors were the first light-inspiration technologies we started with and changed through time into beamers. Today what inspires me is the interactive tools such as smartphones and the Kinect, they deliver great possibilities to be creative and invent new concepts.

What’s your favourite relic piece of technology from your childhood?
I’d say the Nintendo, PlayStation, and the Game Boy, so I guess I liked to play :) What’s certain is that I spent a lot of time with those devices.