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Acqua Alta – Crossing the mirror is a pop-up book whose drawings and paper volumes are the décor of a story, only visible in augmented reality.
Looking through a tablet or a smartphone, the ten double-pages of the book become the stage for a short dance performance – thanks to a custom-made augmented reality application.
In a simple graphic stroke in black and white, ink drawings and white folded paper come together to reveal the virtual life of miniature beings ensconced in an imaginary world. Ten unique sound bites accompany readers throughout the book.
This experience is at the crossroads of theatre, dance, comic book, animated film and “artsy” video game.
Created by Claire Bardainne and Adrien Mondot, Acqua Alta is an original work by the company Adrien M & Claire B.
(Warning spoiler!) Acqua Alta tells the story of a woman, a man, a house. A daily routine, absurd and filled with discrepancies. But one wet rainy day, their life is turned upside down: the rising waters drown their home in an ink-coloured sea. The woman slips and disappears. Only her hair remains, and it is alive.
The book Acqua Alta – Crossing the mirror draws its title from the passing over between worlds.
It tells the tale of a disaster, unique and universal. It tells of losing and searching. It tells of the fear of the bizarre and otherness, and how to tame it. It is a voyage in the imaginary realms of water: in the Venetian lagoon, Acqua Alta refers to the waters submerging the city during exceptionally high tides. In one word, flooding.
A free app, entitled Acqua Alta, can be downloaded on Android and iOS:
If the app does not appear in your phone’s store, your phone is not compatible.
We, Claire Bardainne and Adrien Mondot, founded the company Adrien M & Claire B in 2011. We create work that brings together the visual arts and the performing arts. Our shows and installations immerse the body in images, they blend sensitive and handcrafted art with digital devices.
Created by Adrien M & Claire B, Acqua Alta came into being in January 2019. The project unfolds three-ways:
Although the book is designed as a stand-alone work, it also resonates closely with the two other experiences of Acqua Alta. Together they offer spectators the opportunity to explore three variations on the same story.
To learn more about the project as a whole: adrienm-claireb.net/acqua-alta
We created a prototype of this book in January 2019. At the minute this prototype is presented on tour as an installation alongside our show Acqua Alta – Ink black. And it has been very popular with audiences these past few months: it is one of the very first artist pop-up books in augmented reality!
But our dearest wish is for this pocket-sized show to go home with spectators and also go to public places outside of theatre spaces (like schools, libraries…). Self-publishing the book felt like the best way for us to reach that goal, which is why we are launching this crowdfunding page to support the printing of the book. We hope to be able to print a first run of 250 books, with further prints if we exceed our objectives.
The funds collected will be used exclusively for the printing and manufacturing of the book. The conception and development, including the making of the prototype, have already been fully financed by the company in co-production with LUX, scène nationale de Valence in France. No profits will be made from the sale of the book.
The book is now finished, and the files are ready to print! How this object came into being is a story we love to tell, it is a process combining artisanal practices with modern technologies guided by a single goal: to create miracles, imagine spellbinding scenarios.
To devise a roadmap for this project, we used tools to describe and illustrate each layer and steps to be taken in the creation of the book. Claire Bardainne and Marietta Ren created this storyboard.
We are fascinated by how dance and human movements can be recorded. When designing this book, we built life-sized wooden units of the small pop-up volumes (a staircase, a tilted house), then we recorded Satchie Noro and Dimitri Hatton’s movements in these spaces using MoCap suits. Adrien Mondot designed the digital tools, software and hardware, used in this project.
Eric Singelin is a paper engineer. He helped us find the precise shapes and cuts needed for the paper volumes to fold and unfold easily when the book is handled by readers.
The free app which needs installed on the tablet or smartphone was custom-made with Unity, and relies on a collection of augmented reality tools. The app recognises each drawing and generates its 3D virtual animation. It precisely superimposes it with the volumes of the book in order to bring the paper landscapes to life.
The virtual scenarii are made up of the choreography of two small bodies, drawn from the recorded movements of Satchie and Dimitri, as well as computer generated images built on mathematical models of the motion in wind, sea, rain and imaginary monsters.
Our goal is to use these digital tools to create an animistic-like experience and procure readers a sense of the wondrous and improbable. The app was developed with the help of Rémi Engel.
The drawings are the bridge between the real and the virtual spaces. Claire Bardainne used a drawing technique which facilitates the workings of the tracking algorithm used to generate the augmented reality animation. It also helps the digital image to remain steady. Many irregularities, lots of protruding elements, strong contrasts, and a high volume and density of markings are some of the algorithmic preferences which guided the drawing.
The musician Olivier Mellano composed ten original sound bites to accompany all the scenes in the book, they each last between one to two minutes. There is a spatial element to how the sound is broadcast (the closer the reader is to the page, the louder the sound becomes) which contributes to the immersive experience.
The creative team behind the book :
Format: 45cm x 27cm – 215g/m2 white paper – black UV printing.
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One for you, One for a gift ? You’ll receive two copies of the book plus you’ll save on shipping (compared to pledging for two books separately).
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One for you, One for a gift ? You’ll receive two copies of the book Acqua Alta – Crossing the mirror and two original drawings, plus you’ll save on shipping (compared to pledging for two packs separately).
We care deeply about this project because we feel it is unique: it is one of the first pop-up art books in augmented reality, including both a reading and a live performance experience.
Also, publishing this book involves more than just the printing. For the augmented reality to function properly, and thus for the reading experience to be fluid, the book with its ink drawings must open completely flat. The gluing of the pop-up volumes must be done by hand and therefore must be integrated into the printing and manufacturing process. Very few printing services are able to fulfil all these needs. Costs are therefore very high. For these printing and manufacturing related reasons, it is better to publish a larger number of these books at a time.
We did not take the easiest route: we could have offered an augmented reality experience by simply providing QR codes printed on A4 paper. But, we prefer the aesthetics of a “real” book.
We could have made a book without pop-ups. But we preferred to include these folded paper volumes, made strong by their geometry but still very thin and fragile.
Why?
Because we believe that for the real and the virtual to truly meet, both must be fashioned with the same degree of care and presence. The balance between the tangible material and the digital image is fundamental for the magic and enchantment to happen with augmented reality. And it is the coming-together of the real and imaginary that we find so wonderful. Therefore, care must be given to the real elements. We cherish the material as much as the immaterial: made by hand, the pop-ups in this book are costly to produce, which is the main challenge of this project. Nonetheless, we believe it is essential to provide readers with an authentic experience and one we did not wish to sacrifice.