High-Speed PhotoBooth

Watson Festival HighSpeed PhotoBooth Channel
(www.youtube.com/watsonfestival)

Built for the 2011 Jill Watson Festival Across the Arts

An update to the familiar self-operated photo booth, this booth shoots a brief 3-second video at 1000 frames per second. Once captured, integrated software stretches the video to nearly one minute, slowing quick action to reveal normally imperceptible movements. The video is automatically uploaded to the Arts Festival YouTube channel, collecting together all the 3-second experiments the public performed throughout the festival.

Team:
Design: Pablo Garcia and Spike Wolff
Software/Hardware Design: Riley Harmon and Dan Wilcox
Booth Construction: Kyle Rood
Camera Provided by: Matt Kearney of Fastec Imaging
Lighting Provided by: Gil Penderly of Visual Instrumentation Corp

Support by
The Jill Watson Family Foundation
Studio for Creative Inquiry

Review by Peter Kirn on Create Digital Motion

Visitors enter the booth and perform in front of a high-speed camera. The three seconds of action are stretched to nearly one minute and projected onto the ceiling above the booth.

The high speed camera requires intensely bright lighting. The booth is wrapped in a translucent scrim, illuminating the action inside.

Views of the High-Speed PhotoBooth installed in the Great Hall at the College of Fine Arts, Carnegie Mellon University