Amanda Garrison: Project 4: Relief Mapping : Medallion

Project 4: Relief Mapping

Medallion

April 29, 1992

Concept: 

We were assigned to choose a wall relief sculpture to map. I chose the medallion since it seemed to have a strong visual impact and meaning to start with. At the start of the semester, we looked at some of our professor's works of art, and his message really lingered with me. I have been watching the news and have been hearing the same stories play out, again and again, none of them making sense to me, and all of them angering me. History is always repeating itself!

I watched a documentary on Netflix that was the finishing touch on my inspiration for this composition, It is called 'LA 92', and I highly recommend checking it out if you get the chance. This documentary also stresses my concern, that History just repeats itself, and we never really learn our lesson. Police seem to have too much power, constantly get away with brutalities, all too often being fueled by racism and fear.

The song is Sublime's 'April 29, 1992', which is about the Rodney King riots and all the looting and crazy stuff the citizens began to do after the court announced its unjust rule of the Rodney King trial. They screamed, "NO JUSTICE NO PEACE". It's not fair or right for the police to be tried differently than a citizen. If they commit a crime, they should be punished just the same. I see the potential for this kind of uncontrollable chaos still to this day. When the Freddie Gray riots were happening recently, we saw some of the same behavior, but to a lesser extent. 

I wish I could bring justice for all, but since I do not have that power, I will do what I can to speak loud enough so everyone hears me, and stand up for what I think is right. I don't want to see a tragic day of chaos like that ever again, but to prevent that, we must stop the cause of it.

Why does this keep happening? When can we have equality? When can we have peace and justice for all? When will we all just get along? 

Website: 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/17/us/black-deaths-police.html

Process:

First I looked up some cases so that I could make sure I had all my fact straight, and included anyone I may not have known about. I looked for news footage from the LA Riots and of the recent Riots for Freddie Gray and Eric Garner. I also downloaded some videos of the footage of dashcam and body cam footage of some of the incidents, like those of Latasha Harlins (who was killed by a Korean store clerk at the same time of the Rodney King incidents, and with clear footage of the murder, the court ruled unjustly, also fueling the fire for the riots, putting a target on other innocent Koreans) and Walter Scott, Paul Oneal, Samuel DuBose, and Tamir Rice, and a photo of Akai Gurley. There is a case that happened in the town I lived in 6 years ago, Balch Springs, showing us locals that its here on our doorstep, its not just something happening somewhere. I also wanted to have a special place for Sandra Bland, so I added the beginning clip of her last video post. 

I was able to get these videos off of youtube using the site https://y2mate.com/

I then started working in Adobe Premiere. I bright in the spatial scan photo that I captured while I was in the lab, using the canon DSLR hooked up to the computer wherein madmapper it was able to take multiple pictures to figure out the depth. I used this a base for my videos.

I used a circle crop on all of the shots that matched the circle of the medallion. I would then later match it up on the wall with the projector to get the circle shapes to match because it is not exactly perfect when it is projected.

I noticed without the medallion showing through the video, it looks like the viewer is looking down the barrel of a gun. Then I added in some text to go along with the lyrics and match up with the song, and I did that by using photoshop and making a transparent PNG image with the text in a half circle. 

Then I took it into madmapper, made a few masks and then added some sound responsive animations around the medallion. I wanted it to move so I put a rotation on it and got the speed to match the song, and I chose to have it roll counterclockwise because sometimes that's how I feel that how the world is working. && Don't even get me started on school shootings, that is a-whole-nother project. 

So here is a recording I took with my phone of the composition. I will have to get a better recording with my DSLR ASAP.

Portal

Concept: 

The circular form of the medallion reminds me of the circles of a hula hoop, and it goes round and round, so I made it spin. I wanted to keep this composition shorter for time sake in class when presenting, and my first one is 4 minutes long, so I stuck to playing inside of madmapper for hours.

Process:

 

First I did a spatial scan and it gave me the above image after taking multiple pictures of the scene to determine its depth. Then I also brought in the medallions 3D model into madmapper.

Then I played with the settings on the 3D model, giving it color and playing around with the lighting and texture settings. I like the way it looks but I want to make it colorful, of course. I want it to be funky and have a mystical movement to it. So I added the spectrum quad and the cubic circles one. I changed the settings quite a bit on the cubic circles, animating them even more with rotations.

I also then added a sound activated circular pattern to the inner circle of the medallion to add more organic animations to the composition.

Then I made lines so go along the planes the rim of the medallion. I wanted to animate these lines to turn, and give the viewer the feeling of being infront of something like a portal to another deminsion.

and finally I added another sound activated animation to the compositon with a wave form that goes behind the medallion, and i made the waves as large as the medallion to activate more space around it.

And there you have it, here is a video of results...

THANK YOU FOR WATCHING!