DomeLab

 

Pre-Viz of the ARC-funded DomeLab 4k fulldome installation at the Michael Crouch Innovation Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

Around 2015-6 I worked as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at NIEA (UNSW) to set up DomeLab with Professor Sarah Kenderdine (now Director of M+, EPFL.)

I was involved from the inception of project – working with Sarah upon the ARC linkage application and took up the Post-Doc position at UNSW funded by that application during 2016. This involved processing all material shown on the dome for the MCIC exhibition (including my own original works) as well as developing new interface content and running a couple of workshops for participants interested in developing material for the system (http://paulbourke.net/papers/domelab2015/). This led into developing major works for the National Museum of Australia (see: http://www.petermorse.net/selected-works.html and http://www.petermorse.com.au/2017/11/behind-the-technology-creating-the-dome/ ).

“DomeLab is  the first ultra-high resolution (4K) experimental fulldome in Australia. It is a unique, low-cost display system integrating technical innovation in computing power and graphics capabilities with aesthetic innovation in content delivery.” 

This is an accurate simulation I made based upon supplied engineering diagrams and CAD building models. It differs in that the actual dome has curtains around it to darken the space for viewing – and a few cosmetic details: the main driver was to determine whether the dome would fit into the lobby of the MCIC building – it did (by a few centimetres – see previsualisations below):

Three of my 4k  fulldome movies are regularly shown on DomeLab as part of the UNSW DomeLab permanent collection – Dark (2012) (IMDB, FDDB, Vimeo), Jangurna (2012) and Frozen (2008) (FDDB). 

A 3D Model of the Dome:

Architectural visualisations of DomeLab installed at the Michael Crouch Innovation Centre:

 

The dome is now housed mainly at EPICentre, UNSW.