Wednesday, April 14, 2010

...Lighthouse eleMENTAL...

Yesterday joined forces of Master Students in Music Technology and Interactive Media at UL presented their outdoor projection on Plassey House building at UL: Lighthouse eleMENTAL!

This was one of the assignments for Contemporary Art in the Public Realm module. A huge challenge for us as we did not have much experience in outdoor projections before. There was not much time for preparations because up till Easter we worked on IWAMD installations project. Also, the big projector we planned to use had to be repaired over Easter break. For the last week, all five groups worked very hard and managed to create five short video-animation clips which formed the content of projection. The general theme was 5 elements, agreed to be:

1. Earth

2. Wind

3. Fire

4. Water

5. Spirit/Heart

(check out other Lette's photos!)

Creative Process:
I was working within Earth-group: Louisa Donnelly, Alan Gleeson, Colette Keely and Peng Lu.
More than a month ago, we started from brainstorming and sketching ideas.

Meanwhile, the choice was made about the venue of our projection:

The white facade of Plassey House at UL. It seems to be an excellent location, as people can watch the show both from the Living Bridge and from the lawn in front of the building.
Our group decided to go along with the idea of the tree composed of bits of technology growing from the ground. All groups got a photo of Plassey's facade from Aladdin. It served as a template for creating graphics, animations and effects that would later match the shape of the building.
On Monday, we went out to test rough versions of clips, projector and MaxMSP patch (kindly provided by Oisin Lavery from Tricycle Interactive). We had to measure distance between projector and Plassey House, check settings etc. Results were promising, what motivated us to work even harder towards the final results :-)


Event:

On the night of the show we were really concentrated. One could feel some tension in our lab during last hours before projection. MusTech guys did not have much time to complete music and sound fx but they did a brilliant job! Finally, the time came...

and...
everything went fine! Apart from some technical problems with projector, just before the credits :-) A lot of our friends came - lecturers, families, colleagues etc. - we got a very positive feedback. It is always a rewarding experience!

What a relief!!! :-)

First, quickly put together videos available:
- thanks to Sophie -> here
- thanks to Lette -> here
(this one also contains credits sequence starting at 18:13)

More videos on the way!!! :-)

5 comments:

  1. It turned out to be a great show, well done to everyone involved and great post Cyan Girl :)

    Lette =)

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  2. thanks Lette! :-)
    Your photos are very handy to illustrate the event!

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  3. good stuff and I think it was an interesting experience both for students and audience. Well done!

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  4. aw lovley blog post Beata, great image documentation of it all,

    :) T.

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  5. thanks! I just need to find out was it you Triona or Aladdin who took photos of Plassey - to put proper description :-)

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