Video Mapping: Projector Night

 

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Projector night came and went so fast! It was both nerve-wrecking and wonderful. It was great to show my family and friends some of the things I’ve been working on in Digital Tools for Artists. It was also a great culmination of my After Effects work and video mapping. I spent a lot of the night talking to my family and friends and mapping. I think that was supposed to be part of the objective; I still feel like I wish I could have spent more time experiencing what my peers had created! I heard theres was amazing work all around!

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When I started video mapping in class I took my favorite video and was trying to transform it. On its own it has a nice visual effect, but I wanted it to do more. By chance I was playing around with the layers and placed the map into a cube. I was very pleased with the results. It gave my visual effects a three-dimensional quality. During the rehearsals, I then made multiple cubes of my video by constructing multiple layers and that really elevated my map! I was excited every time I did it. Though my map consisted of multiple layers, the whole map put together felt as one. The arrows of one of my video just melted into the other.

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It was a lot more nerve-wracking to map in front of an audience. My main focus was to map out different geometric shapes that would add a new dimension to videos that I already felt created optical illusions. My main focus was to map in geometric shapes. I noticed that they added a new effect to my videos. At the beginning of the night I started with a pyramid map and then switched to a single cube as the night went on. About an hour in I decided it was time to create a multi-cubed map. My family had actually showed up for the night and were kind of standing over me. They were asking a lot of questions and they made me a bit nervous. But some of my friends told me they liked seeing me map which made me feel a little better, but mapping in front of an audience was okay I guess. To be honest, I might have preferred to have the maps set up and then just switch between them (super Type A), but I guess the night was all about the process, and that’s alright with me (Type C). What made me nervous was that sometimes the layers can be finicky. For example, I’ll shape a layer into a diamond but sometimes the layer will invert and the video plays outside of the map and I can’t find the “drawcorners” and try to change it back. So then, I’ll have to delete the layer, but for whatever reason it’ll delete the layer that I made before the one I was working on, and that fact was what made me nervous! But in the end, it all worked out!

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I thought my multi-cube map was successful with one of my videos, and because of that I decided later on in the night that I would see how it would look with another video of mine. It was very “trippy”, possibly seizure-inducing…!! Overall, it was very cool. The first video felt like the map was moving like a wave, or at times, like waves crashing into each other in the most seamless of ways. The map with the new video felt like it was spazzing out and then moving across the wall! It was both alarming and visually-pleasing, which made me feel like I effectively executed what I wanted. I wanted the viewer to feel a sense of shock but also mesmerization.

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It would have been nice to be in two places at once though. I liked my location because even if you were on the lower level or outside, my map could be seen and you didn’t have to be in my direct space upstairs to experience it. During the rehearsal I was playing around with different walls to map. In the entryway of Heimbold is a wall of wooden panels. I had taken my multi-cubed map over there to see how it would look. That was particularly striking because the dark space in between the panels created another layered effect over my map which was a surprisingly effective physical layer that added dimension to it.

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In retrospect I am very pleased with how the whole night went on. If I could do it again I would start out with the multi-cubed map and only change the video once instead of making 2 additional maps like I did. I guess it was cool to see how I created it and see the map take form and unfold! BUT I would have really loved to see my peers work more. I also might have set up the space so I could change location half way through the night to the entryway. The two hours flew by and the night was amazing, but so short! Overall, I’m very happy with my night and happy I got to experience it with loved ones :)

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I got meme’d (by Danielle Levy)!

Author: Allyson Panton