LightScapes by Synaesthesia
Over the last few years, I've been experimenting with layered transparent fabric light sculptures, and the results have been fantastic.
Click the thumbnail at right to open a slideshow of the first simple single-projector installation for the Rhythm Society's June 2007 All Night Dance Celebration, "Magic", in the SF Unitarian Church. It had four layers of material hung along the entrance hallway.
The material is 8x8 household gauze curtains you can get at Ikea. It's an about 80-90% open mesh, so projections work fine through many layers.
Into the 3rd Dimension
To the left is a video showing a more three-dimensional sculpture, which was suspended inside a 12x20 portable shade structure on the outdoor stage at the dance space of the RS campout at Willits in July.
Note that this time we attached the material from diagonal corners to hang in triangles. Plus two opposing projector angles and closer fabric spacing resulted in awesome optical layering and mirroring effects.
For this installation, we experimented with tensioning the material diagonally, with one or both points lifted up to create a tent effect... more >
Sometimes the outer point was left hanging down to ripple in the breeze, which was quite a dramatic effect especially when people were dancing between the layers, casting multiple shadows.
For fun, I left the upper suspension lines running over the roof bars and down outside the legs, so during the night we could play around with lowering the tent peaks, releaseing and re-attaching the corners in different ways, changing the shape of the sculpture on the fly.
You can see the knotted corners if you look closely at 0:13-0:14 in the video - this is a very strong and easy way to tie off to that gauzy material with no tearing.
This clip shows Ryan Geiss' wonderfully mellow fluid-simulation Smoke effect running. Simple is good. Sometimes we had lively audio-triggered effects going, and it could get really wild on all those layers!
4 Dimensions - Dynamic Suspension Rigging
For the week of the Harbin Unconditional Dance Festival leading up to the 2007/08 New Years Eve dance, we installed a new layered lotus-shaped sculpture in the trusswork of the Harbin Conference Center, suspended from four points with two projectors crossing through just above eye-level. We also had a flat scrim suspended above the other end of the room, with a projector high in the clerestory shooting down through the scrim onto the floor.
Note that all four suspension lines ran through pulleys leading to a single point tied off to a cleat behind a cabinet for most of the evenings. Then at the New Years climax, the whole thing cpoil lowered down slowly, so people could dance between the hanging corners... and then the real fun began... more >
...puppeteering the entire thing live, making it fly around and even dance to the music! There were kids and adults alike running around, ducking beneath as the entire sculpture bobbed and waved like a jellyfish, or dropped down to drape around them. Wish I had videos of that.
Here's a short clip of the flying action, captured during strike with the help of Kenny Schachat (DJ Rhythmistic). You can just see me in the background dancing with the control lines.
Here's a 6-minute mix video with some long walk-arounds showing a variety of visual effects (and a nice soundtrack to replace that blah sound from the cam). It'll have to buffer for a bit, but it's worth watching!
Most of the video content was my own ArKaos mix, but you will see a bit of Electric Sheep, and at the end you'll see the finale from the Illuminated Chakras video, which was perfect for the downtempo windup.
Filling Space Inside a dome
For Burning Man 2007, we installed a simpler setup for Camp Conexus, suspended between vertices of our 30' geodesic chill dome. The larger open overhead space inside the dome lent itself to a more open and immersive sculpture, draping down and outward over the chill mats below.
Letting the video spread out onto the walls of the dome behind the material was also a dramatic effect, especially with the Electric Sheep you see in these clips. After these clips were shot, we added more layers of material in the open area closer to the projectors - wish I had video of that.
Now, this was Burning Man, so the rules are different... more >
The tech side of things has to be really robust, so the gear was really well protected. Here's another clip that shows how the two filter enclosed projectors were positioned and aimed across the dome. Plus here are some detailed photos of the enclosure.
There were two micro DVD players and a V4 mixer enclosed in the same kind of Sterilite case, which you can get at Target - it has a tigh-fitting lid that seals up nicely. This is the same system I designed and installed for the Conexus Cathedral nighttime rose window last year with the help of Richard Klein.
If we do an installation like this again, have to add an electronic timer to properly power down the system around 3am when people want to sleep in the dome. They were simply unplugging the projectors, which is really hard on the lamps!
Two Huge Circles and a Globe
Now, lest you think we don't project on anything solid... here's something for you. (Although it's true that we hardly ever do rectangular screens anymore.)
Anyway, for the Rhythm Society's December All Night Dance Celebration "Abundance" at the SF Unitarian Church, we had two matching 11' circular screens in opposite corners, plus an 8' globe in the center with projections hitting it from two sides, filling it completely! The impact was awesome.
To the right is a short video, which also includes a walk-through of Gail Masri's lovely hoop-and-fabric entryway decorations - gives you a sense of coming into the church and walking down the hall to the dance floor. This was before people started arriving - later in the night the halls were filled! more >
Thanks to our new friend Robb Pope (www.dijjital.com), who brought his cool inflatable sphere, plus a second V4 mixer to create a dual-bus system so we could control the screens and the sphere seperately. Note his video, pure on the sphere, was also being mixed over some of my video on the circular screens.
And thanks also to Karl Gillick for mounting the screen suspension points to the church roof beams - next time let's do the live suspension rigging and fly scrims around like we wanted to do this time!
Here's another clip of the altars and food area - note the slowly evolving projections above the main altar by Paul Greyson, who also did live mix on the dance-floor circles and sphere setup.
I have to say, the RS really puts on awesome events! It's been an awesome place to evolve this work.
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