JMG @ Tisch Asia Singapore MFA Animation and Digital Arts. Course descriptions - Roadmap.
Read the article in ANIMATION MAGAZINE.
Gaming Seminar

Summer 2008 > Experimental video and 3D animation in Nice (France)

Visualization projects (pdf)
Portfolio of projects/installations (pdf)

New interactive installations currently being designed include: gaming projects for entertainement using motion capture and life size 3D digital puppets controlled by the voice of the puppeter, a machinima setup for the game scenes of Adam Rapp's theater play "Stone Cold Dead Serious". These gaming environments are designed directly on top of Microsoft Xna or with Virtools using the Nintendo Wii. Installations have ambitious interactive content. Urban installations designed for unforgiving street wear and tear can run several weeks non-stop withstanding 24/7 interactions from the public. For example Nighthawks 2 was 2 weeks in a public garden in Issy-les Moulineaux.

Scientific visualization projects are also designed around 3D gaming authoring tools. For example a new 3D simulator recreates weather changes above a virtual lake. Images of a real landscape filmed by a video camera can modify the virtual weather - with clouds, sunlight, waves and water conditions changing in real time. Other projects include a 3-D interactive tool for exploring the genetic diversity of world’s 10,000 Bird species an interactive navigation inside the brain and a 3D map of Manhattan, with street corners, interactive crowds, traffic in motion on 42 Street. Installations using large multiple screen displays and virtual reality systems similar to cave or other immersive systems at a fraction of the cost.
For example the Dynamic Virtual Patient, a scientific visualization project Press link designed.for the NYU/ School of Medicine attempts to create a dynamic virtual human body. Learning again how to cross the street is a virtual reality display following the same ideas and created for people with disabilities,

Jean-Marc Gauthier's books Creating 3D Interactive Worlds (Focal Press 2005) Press link , Diseno Animado Interactivo en 3D ( Anaya Multimedia 2005) and Interactive 3D actors and their Worlds (Morgan Kaufman 2001) describe urban installations for window displays, malls, sports events or public spaces; where several viewers can interact simultaneously with virtual cameras and self determined actors using wireless devices such as cellular phones.

Jean-Marc's recent projects explore designing virtual spaces to display educational content. The "Aphrodisias" project, a virtual archeology reconstitution and the Dynamic Virtual Person project, a medical simulation of a dynamic virtual body create new relationships between viewers and virtual spaces projected inside a classroom.

Two main factors covered in Jean-Marc's interactive work are creating a unique viewer's experience and the simulations of living environments that can be influenced by artificial intelligence systems rather than controlled. Viewers discover how to influence an eco-system inside a scene versus controlling a scene.

Virtual sets are redefining the way film directors, dancers, scientists, medical researchers, architects, TV producers and web designers can develop simulations in relationship to a real world situation. The 3D previsualization of a movie scene prior to shooting on location or a virtual visit at the agora of the antique city of Aphrodisias, Turkey, are examples of immersive virtual sets created in Jean-Marc's projects. Jean-Marc uses low-cost technologies in order to design virtual sets for games for interactive TV and for information systems created for decision makers.

Creating real-time interactions between an audience and a virtual environment becomes possible using wireless input devices, cellular phones, VR glove, sensors, robotics. JMG is interested in giving a viewer the possibility to be acknowledged by virtual actors.
JMG's installations - available for lease for museums, festivals and gallery installations - can renew the perception of screen based media in indoor spaces and urban settings. The interactive installations are designed for a wide range of audiences and spaces from giant screens to planetariums and small arrangements of flat screens.

LINKS to courses and blogs: Spatial design - Blog - Core Design - Sciviz - Recapturing life - Intro to interactive 3D - The marriage of virtual and real - Experimental video and 3D animation - From physical to virtual and back - Gaming blog.