Air Guitar Championship
An air guitar installation for the charity Shelter at Glastonbury Festival in the John Peel Stage. A collaborative project with Silent Studios.
Shelter, a housing and homelessness charity, was supported by The John Peel Field at Glastonbury Festival. They wanted an experience to attract visitors in-between bands at the festival to their campaign. Our concept was to create The Shelter Air Guitar Championship, a responsive installation that transformed festival-goers into rock gods.
Entering the little red house and pushing the red button begins the practice mode. A backing track is accompanied by a voice over and crowd cheers indicates the players level of success. The more they move the louder the guitar riff becomes. After practice mode, the session goes into live recording, creating a 15 second video of their performance. Videos are broadcast onto large LED screens. The winner of the contest won a signed Fender guitar.
The Air Guitar Championship was a huge hit – it even came No.4 in Q magazine’s Top 10 things to do at Glastonbury. Shelter have since used the little red house in their touring nationwide campaign.
Technical details
A Pointgrey Bumblebee2 Stereo camera was used to get a real-time depth image from inside the space. If the player got to close to the screen, guitar feedback sounds would be played. Motion vectors were used to effect the guitar solos.
Software programmed in c++ openFrameworks and OpenCV.
Credits
Concept – Silent Studios and Chris O’Shea
Art Direction – Silent Studios
Technical – Chris O’Shea
Sound & music – Resonate
Further documentation
Prototype video
Location shot
Making of photos
Jun 2008
Videos
