Evaluation

After starting the project with Sound and Vision, this really encouraged me to work more freely and on a larger scale. I wanted to continue with this theme as I had looked at a lot of visual artists and projection work over the summer that I found really inspiring. I also started to gain an interest for architecture whilst over in Rotterdam, and researched into one architecture in particular, Rem Koolhaas. I just loved his minimalist yet modern style buildings, and wanted this to be a big influence on the structure of my work. 

I had also been researching into audio visual artists, as this was something I have wanted to create for a while now. This was hard to achieve with the lack of technologies and software workshops provided by the university for what I am interested in, but did attend those that I thought were appropriate such as Maya: Animation, and also have a 3D mapping workshop at the end of the week. I really wanted to push the boundaries with this project in what I was able to create, so I did some research into a technique I had been interested in since doing Sound and Vision, which lets me manipulate a photograph in Audacity which is a Sound Editing software to create a glitched and distorted picture. This took me several attempts before I was able to achieve anything decent and was a really long winded process, but worth it. I also found it fascinating that when I opened the image in Audacity it would turn the photo into a sound ranging from around 2 minutes with some going up to 16 depending on the image size. This could have been a great idea for me to incorporate sound within my work by using that of an actual image, but I simply did not have enough time to do this but could develop this on within the next project.

              
After I had built up a body of work from drawings, Photoshop Manipulations, Illustrator files and Glitched images I then began to create visual imagery using Resolume Software, I have previously used this before so I wanted to push myself further by downloading the advanced version Arena 4, where I was able to create some really detailed video projections. Even though the artists work which I had been looking at were mainly black and white, when creating the visuals they all seemed to come out in quite bright colours, but I preferred this as I thought it would look better when I wanted to project onto structures. As I had spent soo long finally getting the hang of the software I just simply didn’t have enough time to do any Projection Mapping which I was looking forward to the most. but will definitely be including this in my next project as I will be attending several workshops to do so. 
                 

As I liked using the Lazer Cutter last year, I made sure to get myself booked in early this time round so that I was able to use it a lot. After creating some files on illustrator I cut them onto black acrylic as I wanted to combine them with the bright colours from my projections. I also began to take stills from my projections and print them onto acetate so that I was able to play around with the composition and see which worked best together. Not all of my Lazer cuttings worked successfully though, some didn’t cut right through or some started to fall apart as too much had been cut out. This made me really think about my illustrator files more carefully for next time.

                        

After several tutorials, me and Hannah noticed that our work was very similar and would work well together, so we decided to collaborate together to come up with a final piece. I was good at making the projections and she was good on the lazer cutter so it went hand in hand. For our final piece we wanted to come up with some sort of structure to project onto which would also include lights and mirrors as we wanted to work with reflectiveness. I was inspired by Daedelus' Archimedes Robotic Mirror Sculpture which I had seen in person at The Warehouse Project last year, this involved motor powered rotating mirrors which reflected of the light from the mirrors creating a fascinating visual experience. The context of this work was also very influential as it suited the audience and environment that I would have liked to use my final piece in, a club, venue or festival space. To respond to this I created mirror structures After gathering a good body of visual research, we then started to sample the final structure. Using Protopaper we started to build 3d models and test out new shapes which we hadn’t worked with before such as (INCLUDE SHAPE NAMES) in the end we ended up mainly working with triangular shapes. As having fewer sides to project on worked better. Especially now we weren't able to do projection mapping. After we had built the structures, I then recreated the triangles out of mirror acrylic on the lazer cutter and started to build up the structures, lucky enough the protopaper was strong enough to hold the acrylic.


             

With our final session on the lazer cutter, we created two large cuttings on mdf one of my hexagon illustration, and one of Hannah's mushroom which turned out really well. I then also created some triangle structures out of transparent green acrylic with some of my detailed illustration files on the inside so that the lights were able to project through. As we had engraved round some of the triangle though, this meant that some of the projection wouldn’t reach through, but I quite liked this detail.

              

Now our final plans had finally started to come together, we took all our materials to the basement and started projecting. First of all we started to mess around with the composition and arrangements of the triangles and then started to project onto them. We experimented with how the projector would catch on the mirror, and how it would project around the room. We then got a second projector involved so that we could project on different areas of the triangles so that it would almost look like we are 3d mapping. Some of the photographs of the triangles looked the they could have been tents, which also gave me some more inspiration towards the environment we would want to present our work in. we could either have the sculptures on a really huge scale at a festival with lights, projections and mapping on them., where people are able to go inside, Or even onto festival tents themselves making the campsite look really bright and fun. Some artists I have looked at who had also inspired me to come up with the shape and structure of the final outcome were Olafur Eliasson, who used lights and mirrors to reflect patterns back out around the room and also patterns textile room.

Just as things were going really well, I devastatingly lost my 150 page online presentation which i had been creating due to a corrupted file which i was not able to recover. This set me back dramatically as i had to try and restart again. This therefore meant that i was not able to achieve what we set out to do, as for our final piece we wanted to stick all the mirrored structure together to create a huge abstract sculpture which would be spinning and reflecting all the projections off it. I then wanted to edit all the videos together and add sound to create the finishing final piece. But obviously what happened could not be helped. I do believe i have done enough sampling, experimentation, and risk taking to not let this effect the outcome too much but i would have really liked to have done this. 

I believe that I have come along way since the last project and clearly shown that I am able to experiment an risk take. For the next project I would like to continue and develop this work further by making sure I really get my head down and learn the technologies I want to use within my work such as projection mapping and audio visual software. Over the period of this course, I attended the Creative Multimedia exhibition where I got speaking to another student who is interested in Audio Visual art also and was up for collaborating with me in the next project. I think this has great potential because not only do I already have a huge body of work to now use within projections, but this will also help me to pick up how to use new software related to audio visual art which one day I will eventually be able to use myself.

Final Videos

Projection On To Structure

Neon Glow

Here are some more of my lazer cut designs. I created more triangle structures, this time out of green transparent acrylic with one of my previous illustrator designs. but this time instead of cutting all the way through with the lazer, I also etched into the acrylic which i think gave it a really nice effect. in the photographs below i was experimenting with mirror and reflection and also used a UV light which worked really well with the acrylic, giving it a lime green glow almost looking like it lights up in the reflection. I also attempted to project onto the structure but didn't work as well as I thought it would. it seemed to just project off the green instead. however I did capture some quite cool effects in the photograph. i started to play around with the composition of the triangles, and I think these definitely turned out well. I could imagine these being made on a really big scale and used outside at events or festivals like huge teepees. 

Photoshop Manipulation

Here are some final photoshop edits of combined video stills which I am now going to print onto acetate to use within the final installation. 

Final Lazer Cutting Designs

Using both a mixture of mine and Hannah's lazer cut illustrations that we had previously used throughout our work and liked, we then cut these onto large pieces of MDF board. I think that these have turned out really well, and both the hexagon and mushroom designs go hand in hand. I cant wait to play around with the projector on these! 

Daedelus' Archimedes is a Robotic Mirror Sculpture

Archimedes is a robotic sculpture consisting of 24 square mirrors on a motorised frame, which are controlled in conjunction with the music by visualist Emmanuel Biard. It makes for a live show that plays with light to create a spectacle that emanates from its source on stage, seeping into the crowd and enveloping them. And that’s without using visual technology any more advanced than a mirror.

I had previously seen this sculpture in action at The Warehouse Project last year, and really influenced me to use lights and mirrors within my work. i like the way the mirrors create a sense a never ending visual experience. obviously i would not be able to create anything motorised or on this scale, but would like to use the lazer cutter to create pieces of mirror and then make a small installation from them to then project and reflect light on to. 

            

Shape Composition

once we had decided on the final shape that we wanted to use, which was triangle like structures, we then started to play around with the composition of the shapes and projected onto them. the paper and also sides of the shapes capture the projection in really clear detail, and i like how the gap in the middle of the triangle is blacked out as well as around the shapes creating a 3d mapping effect. now i know that the projections work well on this shape, we will now continue to make more on a larger scale. 

 

Projecting on to Shapes

After having made several different shape structures, I then started to project different videos and images onto them, and as you can see some worked better than others. with some of the shapes having a lot more sides, without using the proper software to map onto it didn't look as effective therefore using simpler shapes with less sides would be more appropriate for the structure. 

Overlaying Projections with Lazer Cutting

After creating some new Resolume videos, I then explored layering up the projections in real life, over lapping some of the lazer cut designs and moving them about to create more visual effects. I think this worked really well and I like the colours captured within these videos. 

ProtoPaper Lab

Having discovered Protopaper in the A4 and more, we experimented creating new structures from this. It was perfect for what we wanted to do as it was easy to bend, but also strong at the same time. We started to explore different shapes such as Triangles, dodecohedrons, Icosahedron and just simple folded paper structures which we found on the protopaper website. I also found some insipration of the website as it had included other students work which shown the paper with foil on which looked really cool, and we did want to include mirror in our final piece. Also the structure designs made up of loads of different shapes, and also just the plain paper with lights projected onto it. We will now continue to sample the shapes until we are happy with the one we would like to use. And then begin to build a structure.

 

Creating structures from the paper

Collaboration

For our final piece, me and Hannah another student in Mixed Media decided that we wanted to collaborate as our work was both quite similar and would have worked well together. With Hannah having a lot of Lazer Cutting and me focusing on the visual and projection side the idea was to create an installation involving Lights, Projections and some sort of 3d Structure. We are now going to sample different methods and approaches on how we are going to go about making the final thing.

Black Acetate

Here are three of my favourite video stills, which I have edited in illustrator then finally in photoshop to create a black and white effect. I have also now printed these out on to acetate to play around with the transparency and overlay. if i have time i would definitely like to get these created on the lazer cutter with the etching tool as i think this could create a really cool effect. 

Argumented Reality - Projection Mapping

Inspiration: 

Projection Mapping


Augmented Reality - Projection Mapping from Dane Luttik on Vimeo.

Mono Projections

here is a simple black and white projection in relation to the audio visual artists I have been looking at such as Ryoji Ikeda and alva noto. sometime i think that the simpler and plain the projections the better. 

Murcof + Simon Geilfus

A live experimental movie performance in collaboration with the mexican music producer Murcof. An immersive, cinematic and physical experience. This project is a 4 year long collaboration between Fernando Corona and me. Using a wide semi-transparent screen, the project puts the visuals between the audience and the performers creating an unique audio visual experience. A project produced byNicolas Boritch/Antivj.

Some of the early version of the show featured a stage design created in collaboration with Joanie Lemercier.
It has taken the music closer to where the inspiration to make it came from, evoking macro and micro universes, which I also try to do musically; there’s a giant spider like creature that stretches its arms each time the music explodes, there’s bacteria holding hands and working in groups whilst maintaining their individuality, there are tons of stars that swirl around and become comets, rays of light that become a network of neurons – it’s perfect. It’s at times literal and at times abstract, leaving enough room for personal interpretation from the audience, and for us, too, as each time we play we get to see a different show from the stage.”
FERNANDO CORONA (Murcof)

"Murcof’s music is quiet and subtly violent at the same time, and he does that in a really unique way. His work has a huge narrative potential, leaving a lot of space for interpretation. This is obviously something that makes collaborating with him a real pleasure.

Trough long periods of research, experimentations and development and thanks to several residencies we created together a somehow unique approach to audio visual performance. Over the last few years, we have been presenting this project in festivals and theaters all around the globe from Futuresonic in Manchester to MUTEK in Montreal along with the digital art museum of Beijing and Itau Cultural in Sao Paulo.

It was really important from start to leave some space for improvisation and quite obvious that no software on the market would offer that sort of flexibility. It's been using several versions of a software I’m developing especially for this project. It started as a small bugy prototype written in Processing that I used for our first gig and evolved over the years into several c++ applications that I’m still using today. I’m working on new features every time I can and, and even if it is a really technical aspect of the project, it does bring up new stuff for which to experiment every time."

    

Anti VJ: Light Sculpture

Inspiration 
Light and Sound installation, January 2007
ClubTransmediale festival, Berlin - Germany

Structure by visomat inc - Projections: concept and design by Joanie Lemercier.
Autonomous installation + daily live performance during the festival.

VISUALS: 
Joanie Lemercier

STRUCTURE:
"Halbzeug" by Torsten Oetken and Michael Weinholzner (Visomat Inc). 

Music: zzz06 "hospital tracks" - Sleeparchive

Olivier Ratsi

The year-long wait for the second installment in Antivj co-founder Olivier Ratsi's ongoing, site-specific projection mapping series, Echolyse, is finally over. DELTΔ, Ratsi's newest project, takes the form of a morphing, wall-sized, triangle. The geometric light projection follows in the footsteps of its predecessor, Onion Skin, which used layers of illuminated "peelings," to create the kind of illusion that those with meltable eyes should be cautious of, and has already toured through Taiwan, China, France, and Germany.

Ratsi calls his works "peelings" because of the way they first appear flat, but slowly begin delimiting new spaces via the optical illusions they create. The concept of peelings defines the title of Onion Skin, but DELTΔ earns it's name from a more arcane source: "Originating from the equivalent letter of the Phoenician alphabet," Ratsi writes, "it is based on a hieroglyph initially representing a door." DELTΔ is all about creating that door, which leads to to what Ratsi calls "a fictional three-dimensional space" for the viewer.

He creates the illusory portal using the classic 2D and 3D projection mapping technologies that Antivj helped pioneer (see our in-depth exploration into the work of Antivj here). The key to DELTΔ is Ratsi's combination of anamorphosiswith the careful positioning of viewers to ensure that they absorb the full scope of the dimension-busting illusion.

DELTΔ has already melted faces at site-specific installations is set to melt more faces at the Transient Festival in France and at the Sonica Festival in Slovenia throughout November. If you can't make it to the events, immerse yourself in these stills of DELTΔ: