Bonnie Abbott, Eli Slack, Chase Coleman, Bailey Lai: Context Mapping

For our final project in this course, we decided to map multiple areas of ATEC, unifying nooks and little rooms of the building in order to activate them for a larger piece.  Because we were working with a larger group, we created several dynamic pieces in three different locations. The locations are: the fourth floor projector room, the Motion Graphics lab poster wall, and the Motion Graphics lab column and window wall. 

Concept: 

We wanted to find less frequently travelled areas of the ATEC building that might be overlooked, and thus ended up in the projector room on the fourth floor. The pieces we put together were high energy and mesmerizing, with our key guiding words being "vibrant" and "continuous". We sought out challenging surfaces to use as our canvases, and build from there, allowing the architecture to inform our creative decisions.

Technique:

In the projector room, we were able to activate the space in a unique way, as the walls were paint splattered and pock-marked with tacks, so that when we hung up the hat to serve as something to mask, the room revealed a harmony of elements we hadn't even anticipated. 

Hat suspended on wall in projector room as we tested materials.

After we were satisfied with the cues with the hat, we began setting up to project on something harder to mask than a flat wall: an old projector in the room.

Old-School projector being mapped.

 We eventually masked the surfaces with some trial and error, and left to come back the next day to continue work. The chaos of being an ATEC student had other ideas, however, when the following day we came back to find the projection room like this: 

Projector Room the next day for some reason.

After this discovery, we relocated to the third floor motion graphics lab. The benefit of moving to this new area was exposure to new elements with the potential of being activated through MadMapper. We got to work first with the 'poster wall', masking off and adding quads appropriate to the space. 

Poster Wall in the process of being masked

We chose to include a corner this time in order to practice our mesh warping skills and get the perspective just right. After that, it was just a matter of creating content and finding materials that worked well together.

The last space we chose to use as our canvas was the window wall with a column adjacent to the poster wall. There were many architectural elements we were excited to incorporate, including through the window, where there is a metal accent with circles punched out that we knew would look incredible once activated.  

Window Wall Cue 1

The distortion from the window panes added an extra ghost layer, which, when combined with the outdoor metal architectural element, the column, and the right-most flat surface, we were able to have an effective foreground, middle ground, and background. This allowed for more complex compositions, and much more depth of field opportunities. Wanting to have an element that engaged with all planes, we made a short looping animation that matches the flowing momentum and energy of our piece that paid homage to what had previously been drawn on the whiteboard that we were projecting onto. 

Balloons Transparent Asset

Interpretation: 

This project encouraged us to explore the school and approach architecture through a new lens, which is impressive considering the collective amount of hours all of us have spent in the ATEC building. Our final video is a collection of the pieces that were created in the process of this project, stitched together into one. All of the spaces we calibrated ended up surprising us with elements we hadn't anticipated, all of which end up resulting in a better final piece. 

Relevant Files