Omar Davila - Relief Mapping

Concept

"One Half"

When starting this assignment, I first picked out which relief I could see myself projecting onto. My choice was the large forehead Black Man Grove relief. I pondered about the concept of peace, and began to think about inner peace.

A song that came to my head was "One Half" by Julianna Barwick. Her ethereal music brings a soothing peace through me and triggers my favorite synesthetic colors. To further it more, I wanted to show what effect the music had on me through a physical plane. I have chromaesthesia -a phenomenon where aural stimuli invoke a visual perception of color- and relaxing songs are those that invoke a pallet of aqua, magenta, seafoam green, and black.

I wanted the projection to display how the dynamics, meter and layering of a song looks like in my head.

"I am the Architect"

One night, I was working on my first projection, and listening to music, when I hear the ending of the song "Psychopomp" by Thank You Scientist. In the last minute of the song, all music cuts out and the listener is left with a monologue contemplating the power of self-direction. The monologue itself, though, is in an unsettling, monotonic, and repetitive voice, which made me think, "if my first projection is using the peace symbol in an introspective context, what not make the second one in an ironic context?" I got to work on creating a projection that invoked the uncanny valley.

(Thank You Scientist - "Stranger Heads Prevail" Album)

Process

"One Half"

I started my projection by looking for smoke and particle effects that I could turn into a kaleidoscope effect. After I created the effect, I moved the effect clips around in order to sync the cloudbursts to the rise and falls in the song. 

After making the background, I exported the video and went into Madmapper to calibrate it with the model of the relief sculpture. I then recorded the synced version, so that I could have a more accurately aligned projection while working in AfterEffects.

I went on to add line work in the background that was synced to the beat and feel of the music. Then I added the music video in the center, as I wanted the center to represent what the video looks like to everyone, and the background to represent what is invoked in my mind when listening to the song. 

"I am the Architect"

For the second projection, I started by brainstorming things that felt unsettling to look at: old film grain, shaking lines, eyes peering into the soul, and upside down lighting. I began by gathering these assets and cutting the clip of the song I wanted to use. I then remembered an atonal song, called "Der Mondfleck" by Arnold Schonberg, that could add to the tense soundscape I wanted to create. 

Once I got my assets, I started the base layer by adding a concrete texture to the relief model and messing with the lighting options until the relief was lit from the bottom up; an effect I learned from my theater class a couple semesters ago. 

Next, I added -and mixed- the music and created a kinetic type of the monologue on AfterEffects. On top, I added the film grain effect during the climax of the soundscape to make the viewer more tense. 

I exported this and brought it into Madmapper to screenshot where the peace symbol would be. Then, in AfterEffects, I traced the symbol and added a gelatin effect that increased as the sound crescendoed. Lastly, I added eyes at the end to tie up the projection. 

Interpretation

During this project, I learned how to scan three-dimensional objects, and how to play around with them within Madmapper, which I can use to create simulated spaces in the future. I also learned how to ad keyboard controls to MadMapper thanks to a peer. 

Ultimately, this project taught me that an already 3D object could be further expanded by projecting onto it. I plan to create more works of this fashion in the future.