MIGZ 2011 Videomapping weekend from MIGZ Festival on Vimeo.
From the inbox: MIGZ is a Moscow-based festival of music and media, covering live and DJ music acts, video and media art, workshops and lectures, spanning labs and clubs, and even offering a unique market of designers and record labels. And, as we’ve been seeing architectural projection mapping spread around the world, here’s the latest stop on our planetary tour. The famed amusement venue Gorky Park is the destination, that legendary creation of Constructivists and avant-garde. The place had fallen on hard times in the post-Soviet era, but one Russian friend tells me the new ownership has successfully renovated the place into one of Moscow’s cooler spots.
I seem to have conversations about projection mapping nearly weekly, and whether it will lose steam. But as smiling onlookers watch a landmark facade appear to bend, crumble, and transform with visual effects, you see why it might not: outdoor architectural visual, the latest canvas for our digital imagery-filled lives, is here to stay precisely because it’s public. (And, hey, the local planetarium is still putting on those laser shows, so maybe nothing goes away, ever.)
If there’s a limitation to mapping, then, it’s us – our ability to produce the content. And here, the crowd-pleasing visuals look positively moving partly because of the venue.
MIGZ looks like they’re doing some incredible things; I hope we’ll keep up on what they present – and the Russian scene in general, which owing to language and politics I think we know far less well than we should. So, Russian readers, hello!