As projection mapping moves from technique or novelty into genuine medium, one terrific place to look for the progress of state of the art is the Mapping Festival. With backing from a visual developer – Modul8 and MadMapper publisher GarageCUBE – but extending to live visual work in general, Mapping puts live visuals front and center. Visuals headline, rather than serving as a backdrop.
For a glimpse behind one piece in particular, see the video at top of FAIL, a piece that — well, for me, doesn’t. The video goes into the artistic team and their motivations. The reflections do get a bit lofty, but they’re always stimulating. Details:
FAIL “Wood as Bones, Light as Flesh” @ Mapping Festival 2011, Bâtiment d’Art Contemporain, Geneva.
The structure is in essence a narrative organism. This being is telling its story without words or any human form. Its body is its language. This body has its own temporal vitality, a re-interpretation of the human condition. The wood has the value of bones and flesh is no different from the temporality of light.
As the audience moves around the sculpture, they are inevitably part of the story unfolding around them.
FAIL is the collective of electric kettle, SILANT, Lucy Benson and fRED
Image and editing : Jerome Monnot
That’s just one look at what took place earlier this year at Mapping, though; pixels immerse space in a number of other pieces, from VJ Fader’s more reflective dance work to dance party optical explosions. See below:
Lots more where that came from:
http://mappingfestival.ch/2011/