Tokyo – WISNU [W] WISDANTIO

The 360-Degree Panohead Prototype as the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Photography tool
(2016)

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Go-Circle is a prototype of The Do-It-Yourself (DIY) 360-Degree Panohead developed by “Wawies” Wisnu Wisdantio [Lifepatch] and Stefanus Kushartanto [St. Joseph – The Carpenter]. Produced limited as a kit for Workshop – GoCircle: How To Make DIY 360-Degree Picture in ICC Gallery, Tokyo, November 13rd, 2016. Also displayed in The Collaboration Project ‘‘Media Conscious in Asia” : Lifepatch ‘Rumah dan Halaman’, which is an exhibition organised by Japan Foundation Asia Center and NTT InterCommunication Center (ICC) at ICC Gallery B5, Tokyo Opera City Tower, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo.

The 360-degree picture is a spherical image that recording the photographer surrounding areas in only one image. Nowadays, it’s become very popular and easy to create by everyone only with the help of a particular app on a Smartphone or PDA. Before it became very popular, The 360-degree picture is very hard to make and need complicated process, especially when using a Pocket camera, Digital Camera, or an analog camera. Basically, producing a 360-degree picture only need to make serial pictures about 45-50 pictures from each spot location and then stitching all together. However, the tricky part is maintaining the point of view in exact same spot. If not, there will be a parallax between each picture point of view and made the serial picture very hard to be stitched each other. In order to reduce the parallax point, there is a particular tool as camera’s tripod addition called The Panohead that have to attach between camera and tripod. More than that, the photography tools tends to be very expensive and made not many people could afford or use it.

The rivers in Jogjakarta have significant historical, economic, and social importance. However, not many people in this city aware of those rivers’ importance. It’s only known as the backyard of the city, neglected, and rarely touched.

Triggered by the curiosity of some people who never visited those rivers, a walking trip through the river banks became an embryo of a long-term river environmental monitoring project called Jogja River Project that conducted by Lifepatch.id since 2012, with the idea to share all the knowledge that they found from the river as an open-source knowledge which can be easily understood by everyone. Part of it is making interactive documentation through 360-degree pictures that took from the river center in order to make anyone who saw it can feel how it’s like when they are in the middle of the river.

Facing a situation when the photographic equipment is expensive objects, brought me as a member of Lifepatch to make an experiment of making our own Panohead Tool, which is much cheaper and affordable. From 2013, the research conducted on a “trial and error” process based on the development of my knowledge that influenced by various sources, which is made me collecting several designs as results of the research that still evolving. The most recent design is made with an adjustment mechanism so it can be used with different types of cameras and tripods.

Go-Circle : The DIY 360-Degree Panohead, exhibited at The Collaboration Project ‘‘Media Conscious in Asia” : Lifepatch ‘Rumah dan Halaman’ in ICC Gallery Tokyo, 2016

Undeniable, most people still thinking of making a 360-degree Panohead and a 360-degree picture still remains an activity that is not easy to do. Basically, the essential idea of making the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) photography tool is trying to decrease the gap between technology and its users through examination, exploration, research, and development. Within the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) ethos is a practice in order to stimulate new systems and styles of living and working that develop out of the creative process of individuals.

Beside of becoming part of The river monitoring project, The DIY 360-degree Panohead are also introduced to various community and children in schools as an educational project. The design and schematic of the DIY 360-degree Panohead are open sources and available at the public online with a creative commons license. Within The Collaboration Project ‘‘Media Conscious in Asia”: Lifepatch ‘Rumah dan Halaman’, The DIY 360-degree Panohead was produced as a workshop kit on Workshop – GoCircle: How To Make DIY 360-Degree Picture in ICC Gallery, Tokyo, November 13rd, 2016.