For my first Projection Mapping project, I decided to explore the buildings around UTD which don't seem get as much attention as the rest. I was also looking for spots which wouldn't be too complex or irritating to map on to, as a newbie to Madmapper and projection mapping in general. After getting my hands on Madmapper and playing around with it's tools, my idea for the projection evolved into using bright technological visuals inspired by the aesthetic of Tron and Cyberpunk.
Projection 1 and 2 Origin
Projection 3 Origin
Technique
I began by mapping out the areas on the building I wanted to project on and masking out the places where the quads overlapped with other quads or elements in front of the projection.
Projection 1 and 2 Mapping
Projection 3 Mapping
To establish unity among the elements, I decided to use a single color for each Projection. For both projections, I used the addition blend mode to eliminate the black backgrounds, revealing more of the original color of the building. Wherever a quad coincided with each other (the two sides of the pillars, the corners where the wall and ceiling meet), I wanted those projections to connect by playing the same projection, creating the sense depth.
Interpretation/Final Products
For both projection 1 (first half of first video) and 3 (second video), I decided to imitate techno and futuristic aesthetics as a way to illustrate the technological focus of UTD. The culture here, especially in ATEC, tend to embrace new technology and futuristic ideas shaped by emerging technologies. On the flip side, I wanted projection 2 (second half of first video) to be more cozy, illustrating the chill and easygoing environment on campus.
Projection 1 and 2 Final Product
Projection 3 Final Product
Tuesday, September 4, 2018
Soul You: Projection 1 Backdrop Mapping For our first projection mapping exploration, I decided to photograph Northside Apartment's scenery because it was the perfect hub for UTD students to congregate and interact. I wanted to create a projection mapping site where people would want to meet and easily recognize as "Northside". There is a wide street that goes across the college apartment complex. I really loved the Christmas lights it had; it looked so dainty. I wanted to create a projection where kids can relax with the soothing movement and flow of the projections. Since college students get stressed out with numerous things, the serene lights can hopefully help them stay grounded and keep on going. The conceptual words I would use to describe this work are serene, cool, and meditative. The music that would be playing around the weekend would be slow trip hop and soft jazz hop music. On the grassy part of the street, I decided to project a circle that beats along to the music. The sloping animation on the poles suggest the feeling of rain. On the side of the apartment complex, I used After Effects to animate the word, "Breathe" against a soothing background of bubbles.
The swelling and fading movement of "Breathe" is designed to help students calm down from everyday stress. Students can inhale and exhale along with the projection and get enough oxygen into their brains for maximum studying and working power! This simple breathing exercise can help lower anxiety and stress for people of all ages. In fact, anxiety and depressive disorders are one of the most common mental health issues plaguing college students. The second projection provides students with the UTD Counseling Center's after hour phone number; this number will be helpful for students when the counseling centers are closed. Often, students are faced with loneliness and they feel like there is no one to talk to. Especially during late nights, most people and businesses are busy or closed down. The phone number is there as a reminder so that students know that they can always talk to someone. On going, there is an animated sky floating across the street and it encourages people to look forward to the new day; to turn over a new leaf.
"Paranoia" Paranoia is something that I've struggled with in the past and I'ts been a bit of a creative block at times. I wanted to get that out of my way creatively. I just needed to express it through this new creative channel, projection mapping. so I found several videos of eyes and sampled them. making a collage with a kaleidoscope effect. This was to simulate what it can feel like to be under the harsh eye of scrutiny. I have a lot of sympathy for people that have succumbed to the pressure of society. and have heard the plight of so many broken and beaten individuals. I can't fully grasp the kind of fear and defeat that they have expressed to me on the streets. But mental health has become such a problem in our population, especially this generation. I don't know how to help or even effectively talk about such things but I just felt like I needed to acknowledge it. This look was made entirely in mad mapper with only 6 different samples. I used different videos to give the effect that there is light coming from below. and the shadow on top.
I was really happy to see that I had inspired someone. I'm really not sure which of you made this but I love it and I think that it works better than what I made. or at least comes off a bit cleaner. Really good work.
I posted both of these to Instagram with a mad mapper tag. Mad Mapper re-shared it as the post of the day. It was nice to have my work appreciated by so many people on social media platform I've only just started to use.
"Geo Growth" Based on a sketch by David, I modeled this geometric bulgy relief. after uploading it to Discord It was fully built and hanging two days later when I got to class. I'm very impressed by everyone in this class that continually added creativity and built on each other's Ideas. I used the model to render out several black and white masks distorting and stretching the model in different ways. layering these together gave me some very interesting effects. The concept and overall result of this project was a sense of collaboration and while most looks that were made with this piece were of relatively low concept and high in visual appeal. It kind of seemed like everyone wanted to use this to make things that were low energy and simple. In fact, the trend seems to be that when there is something that needs activating in the space like a face sculpture or lion tape people match the energy of that thing and really light it up! and for this piece, everyone seemed to want to simplify and refine a single idea.
I used these in Blender as backgrounds to model the object. around. Then I extruded all the points at different distances to make a similar shape.
Then I used the freedom of blender to make some cool black and white textures of the shape. layering coloring and blending them until I got the look that I was going for.
When I saw the head sculpture, my first thought was to use it as a backdrop to tell the a story of someone's thoughts. So, I was thinking, "What do I think about the most?" I'm a very sentimental person, and I tend to look back into my past often, so I wanted to present an archive of my memories, an ode to the people who I carry in my heart. In order to really make this project personal and put a piece of my heart into it, I decided to use the song "Hermoso Cariño" which is a song close to my heritage, and my family in general. In fact, it's the song that my grandfather sang to me for my Quinceñera. My second projection was my way of learning and honing my editing and video work. I decided to mash up two things that've been hitting close to home as of late. Paramore's music has been with me ever since I was little, reminding me of my sister, and have been a bright light when things seemed bleak and endless. Their summer 2017 album "After Laughter" deals with the band's anxieties and pessimism, and I wanted to create visuals from their music videos, and put it with the song "ECHO" by Crusher-P which deals with the topic of anxiety and such. I felt the two would provide a great creative outlet for me in this project.
Process
The first composition required me to go through my files and look for as many evocative pictures/videos as I could find. (Mostly thanks to airdrop!) I pulled videos from Facebook, pictures from Instagram, media from Snapchat Memories, and from my phone's gallery. After that, I took everything, put it into AfterEffects, and made necessary cuts and adjustments to try to get as much media on the screen. Working with weird aspect ratios (thanks to vertical phone filming) was difficult, and instagram photos are tiny (Don't even get me started on facebook videos). But everything was used and incorporated!
The second composition proved to be pretty difficult, considering that prior to making it, I had no idea how to edit video in AfterEffects. I took my videos, precomposed them, made "supercuts" (cutting and splitting footage I wanted to use) and then started piecing them together in the main composition timeline. I wanted the lyrics of the song to clearly be reflected by the visuals, which sometimes required multiple video clips layered on top of one another. There were a TON of layers, but precomposing them made things a little more manageable. Long and tedious, but a labor of love.
Interpretation
I learned how to spatial scan a object to project onto in MadMapper, I also got to get a little more familiar with line and mask controls this go around. Along with some basic editing skills that I had originally lacked. However, I learned how to put my heart into my projects, even when I'm in a rut and when times are hard.
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.
Continuing with Assignment 4, I wanted to create a composition with a complementary texture to the music or sound associated with. While digging for video content to match the music, I found some great 4K Microscope videos, and the fuzzy sepia tone color really caught my eye. The desaturated color palette makes the intense texture of the cells way more prominent. The focus is brought to the brightness and shadows instead of using drawing the eye towards a contrasting color palette.
Process
The low relief that Ben put together, the Growth, seemed like a perfect theme for the tiny organism footage I found. I wanted the sculpture to be one of the cells itself, just an abnormal, oblong one.
I ended up using the 3D Object calibration technique instead of the camera calibration, and getting it to perfectly aligned ended up being quite tricky.
To elaborate on the elements of the first composition, I wanted to see what overall cold colors would do for the concept. Instead of the muted warm colors of the light of the microscope, I thought that macro lens video content of ice and snowflakes would have lots of natural detail and beauty.
Process
The cold, dark palette that the video content of the ice gave me the idea for much heavier and darker music. Late Night Cig by Sokro sets the urgent yet slow-paced mood to the still visuals of the ice, which just further the depth of contrast. I liked the way that enhances this feeling of the unknown.
One thing that I do think would improve my flexibility of composition is recording my own Macro-lens video content. My goal next semester is gaining more skills in developing and manipulating my own video content in more creative ways. I want the production quality of my personal visual production to catch up to that of my personal audio production.
