With Avatar, director James Cameron built the most immersive virtual world that has ever been created on-screen. Now, Snibbe Interactive brings the futuristic technology and alien ecology to life in Avatar: The Exhibition at Seattle’s Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum – open through September 2012. The exhibition is about as true-blue a fan can get without body paint.
Using Snibbe Interactive’s SocialScreen platform, visitors are invited to wade into Pandora’s ecology and mingle with simulated woodsprites. In the exhibit, luminescent floating jellyfish-like creatures glide through a high definition projection of the planet’s verdant forest. The glowing woodsprites descend upon visitor’s shadows when they remain still, and skitter away when visitors move suddenly, just like the magical creatures in the movie.
During the production of Avatar, director James Cameron used a “virtual camera” to move within and capture Pandora’s three-dimensional landscape. Snibbe Interactive recreated this process with a Virtual Camera exhibit in which visitors can become a director, creating their own unique version of scenes created with the identical 3-D material the production’s visual artists created for the film.
Similarly, SocialStage replicates the real-time “performance capture” of Avatar’s actors. When you step into SocialStage’s glowing room and begin to shake your blue booty, it’s not merely a Na’vi simulacrum – it’s the same 3D models in which actors Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana injected their creative energies. It’s the same digital DNA, making your Avatar and theirs digital half-siblings.
Snibbe Interactive’s multi-touch display, the SocialTable Touch, provides an intuitive interface to showcase trivia, images, video and other ephemera behind the Avatar experience. It’s like a Na’vi-sized iPad! Drop special shapes onto the table and rings of material spin out, allowing you to endlessly explore the concept art and alien ecology created to make Pandora feel so real.
