Renderings from
Rouen Revisited




An interactive art installation by
Golan Levin (Interval Research Corporation) and
Paul Debevec (University of California at Berkeley)

animations | stills


A Note about the Renderings

The Rouen Revisited interactive kiosk allows its users to explore eight dimensions of the façade of the Rouen Cathedral in Normandy. Users can examine the cathedral in various levels of fog; at different times of day; from different points of view in three-dimensional space — and lastly, along three dimensions of media and interpretation: namely, as the cathedral appeared to photographers a hundred years ago, as it appears today, and as it would appear if Monet's impressionist paintings of it were aligned with and projected onto its surface.

The unwieldy size of the Rouen Revisited image database (nearly 3 gigabytes of renderings) prohibits us from creating an interactive, web-based version of the project at this time. In this section of the Rouen site, we instead attempt to convey the experience made possible by Rouen Revisited in a compact, easily-transmissable and (for now) non-interactive form. In addition to presenting still images, we have also converted select paths through the multidimensional space of possible renderings into short animations and digital videos. The animations are presented as animated gifs, reduced to one-ninth of their original size and dithered from 24-bit color down to a browser-safe 8-bit palette. Viewing these animations requires a Netscape 2.0 or better browser. The Quicktime and AVI videos are similarly reduced in size, and additionally compressed with the Apple Video or Microsoft Video compression formats.


Animations

Each of the sequences below can be viewed as an in-place animated gif or a downloadable Quicktime or AVI movie. If you choose to download a video, we recommend that you set your movie player to "Loop" mode for best results. In all cases, additional text describing each sequence can be found on its animated-gif page.

Time Series.
These two animations detail the play of light across the cathedral's façade as the day progresses from dawn until dusk. In the first animation, time-lapse photographs taken by Paul Debevec in January 1996 have been projected onto the cathedral model and re-rendered from a new point of view; in the second animation, we present a sequence of Monet's Rouen Cathedral paintings, ordered in time and re-rendered from the same point of view as the re-rendered photographs (i.e., directly in front of the cathedral and approximately 20 or so meters in the air).

Moving "Around" Monet's Cathedral Paintings.
The following animations represent a small selection of possible paths through the time and space of the Monet Cathedral paintings. In each, the time of day is held constant while the point of view is moved in a loop around the façade.

Moving Around Reprojected Photographs, taken January 1996.
These animations present synthetic paths around the façade of the Rouen Cathedral, and are derived from photographs taken in January 1996.

A Hundred Years Ago: Moving Around Reprojected Photographs, taken circa 1890.
This animation presents a synthetic path around the façade of the Rouen Cathedral, and is derived from three postcard photographs taken sometime in the mid-1890's.

A Comprehensive Video.
This large Quicktime video (11.5 MB) of renderings comprehensively summarizes the views afforded by Rouen Revisited, including its ability to portray the Rouen Cathedral at different times of day, from different points of view, and in re-renderings derived from modern photographs, historic photographs, and paintings by Claude Monet.


Stills

Rouen Re-Rendered: Re-Projections of Modern Photographs.
The first, from a virtual camera high in the air during the early afternoon; the second, from a virtual camera far to the right during the late afternoon.

Four Re-Renderings — of Photographs and a Painting — from the Same Point of View.
Here, the point of view and time of day are held constant, while we change the media of the re-rendered source material. Click here to contrast medium-sized re-renderings side by side; otherwise, click on the thumbnails below for larger images rendered at three-quarters of the resolution used in the kiosk.

Four Re-Renderings — of Photographs and a Painting — from Monet's Point of View.
Here, we project and re-render our source materials from a point very close to one of the points from which Monet painted. The point of view and time of day are held constant, while we again change the media of the re-rendered source material. Click here to contrast medium-sized re-renderings side by side; otherwise, click on the thumbnails below for larger images rendered at three-quarters of the resolution used in the kiosk.

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