Project 3: Light Pollution
Good-ol'-Guerrilla-style BYOB
(Bring Your Own Beamer)
VJ Projection Mapping
Get ready to ignite the night with an underground light show! Prepare to blast your creativity beyond the usual canvas—this is guerilla-style projection mapping! First, we’ll dive into VJ techniques, remixing found video content live, and then we’ll explore projection mapping software to give organic and geometric objects a living pulse, crafted from pure light.
Your mission: Create a visual narrative
Step 1: Create a pallet of moving images. This is an exercise in remix—an alchemy of borrowed and original worlds. Scavenge the digital cosmos for images, videos, and gifs, and fuse them with your own personal creations to tell a visual story. Choose visuals that resonate with the essence of your narrative, amplify your message, set the tone and shape ideas.
Step 2: Build a canvas out of objects. Now, let’s go full guerrilla and scavenge the world for objects--the building blocks of your visual story. Look for things with charge—items that have a life of their own, that can speak to the narrative you’re about to unleash. Objects can come from anywhere. Dive into dumpsters, rummage through thrift stores, raid hardware shops, or pull treasures from your own creative chaos. These objects, whether personal or universal, will be your canvas—each one carrying its own mysterious energy, ready to be brought into the light.
Step 3: Render your composition—orchestrate an arrangement of digital and physical elements, aligning them to tell your story in the most electrifying way. Layer projected visuals onto your objects like colors on a painting. Blend worlds, distort, blur boundaries, reimagine and let the fragments collide and conjure something entirely new, alive with your unique vision.
Software:
VDMX only for Mac: VDMX6 | VIDVOX
MadMapper for Mac & PC: MadMapper Software
Examples:
Technique
An example of projection mapping a large building, house or structure.
On a car.
Projection map a painting or a poster!
Projection mapping in cinema.
Projection mapping as an installation:
How about a shoe?
Food?
Projection mapping performance!
Artists:
Peter Campus
Peter Campus is an American video artist known for his pioneering work in video installation and digital media. Emerging in the 1970s, he was an early innovator in the field of video art, using the medium to explore themes of perception, identity, and the self. Campus often uses video to manipulate the viewer's perception, incorporating elements of self-reflection, technology, and abstraction into his work. His pieces are marked by their contemplative, almost meditative quality, where the viewer becomes an integral part of the experience. Some of his most notable works include video portraits and interactive installations that challenge traditional concepts of identity and perception.
Tony Oursler
Tony Oursler is an American contemporary artist known for his experimental work with video projections, combining video, sculpture, and installations to explore themes of identity, consciousness, and technology. His surreal projections onto objects or human-like forms create immersive environments that merge physical space and digital media, blurring the lines between reality and perception.
Oursler delves into the dark side of human psychology and societal influence, using narrative, surrealism, and technology to confront uncomfortable truths. His cinematic installations feature animated faces and voices that challenge the viewer's perception of reality, making him a prominent figure in multimedia art.
Oursler's innovative approach to technology and human experience continues to push boundaries, provoking reflection on the relationship between humans and their creations.
Nobumichi Asai
More Artists to Explore
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
A Canadian-Mexican artist known for large-scale interactive installations that often incorporate light and projection mapping. His works explore the boundaries between technology and human experience, similar to Oursler’s focus on psychological impact through media and technology.
Kara Mulrooney
Her work blends installation, video, and projection mapping, with an emphasis on exploring the interplay of the human psyche with modern technology. She often integrates narrative and surreal visual elements in her projects, offering a contemporary counterpart to Oursler's psychodramatic style.
Danielle Eubank
Eubank has explored how projected visuals transform physical spaces, merging abstract digital art with installations to tell a narrative through light and shape, blending the tactile and ephemeral.
Squidsoup
A collective known for creating immersive light installations that use projection mapping to weave 3D environments, often turning entire rooms into interactive visual experiences. Their work frequently explores the fusion of virtual and physical worlds, much like Oursler’s own works that mix video with sculptural forms.
Oswaldo Macia
His installations often incorporate projections that engage with the environment, transforming both the space and the viewer’s perception, with visual storytelling as a key component.
Assignment guidelines:
For this project you will create a performance-based projection mapping project. It can be any size (physically) and can be indoor/outdoor but should meet the following requirements:
Must include some element of live performance: moving objects, living performers, live effects (using VDMX, Resolume or other software, midi controls, etc.) You can use anything you can justify as "performance."
Must remix a minimum of 4 videos, can be yours or appropriated.
Must have a concise theme that is communicated clearly using visual literacy. Use visual/auditory symbols to articulate the intended meaning. What are you trying to say with your performance and how will your audience understand your idea? How are you getting your point across?
5. Must use 3D objects, no screens or walls... think outside the box.
Tips:
Projection is best picked up on white of very light materials.
Practice your performance beforehand to get your timing right.
Have a plan. You can't save your file with the free version, so be ready to build it fast, keep notes.
Don't overthink it, simple is fine if your message is being communicated clearly.
Visually pleasing is good, but make sure your message is clear.
Try many different objects, project inside them, outside them, play with surfaces, experiment and take positive risks.
GET STARTED RIGHT AWAY! Check out a projector and play with it. Theory is not the same as practice. play play play play play!!
Some objects to consider: buckets, toys, boxes, sculptures, people, kitchen utensils, clay, posters, flags, wigs, feathers, costumes, clothing, food, plants, mannequins, books, cages, vases, jars, cups, balloons, paintings, styrofoam, jewlery boxes, doll houses, paper products, sports equipment, plastic, fish tank, canvas, and any of a wide variety of unique objects you can find at thrift stores, in dumpsters, etc.
Play!
Try new and scary things!
Take positive risks!
Experiment!
Questions?
Comments