Friday, September 25, 2015
Absolutely Massive Building Projection Mapping - iMapp Bucharest 2.0
Projection Mapping Central: Last year for the 555 year anniversary of the city of Bucharest, the facade of the Parliament Palace (the 2nd largest building in the world after the Pentagon) was transformed into a projection mapping spectacular. Now the city of Bucharest is back for more. This year the show is called iMapp 2.0.
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Projection art is still relatively new to the scene but it certainly is picking up. It was interesting and surprising to me when I first came to Carnegie Mellon and figured out that media design was actually a concentration in the School of Drama. I didn't know that media and video could have been part of theatre and I suppose that's because I haven't been exposed to a lot of experimental theatre prior to studying drama. iMapp Bucharest 2.0 reminds me of home in a way because every year up until 2015, the Dumbo Arts Festival in NYC would have a projection piece that would take place on the Manhattan bridge. The most iconic piece that I was remember was the projection piece that was done in 2011-- it was a giant head that moved around, but with the usage of line and bending of form, it looked completely 3D (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-DVB7pbS-Y). Projections in theatre and other art forms have so much potential and it's exhilarating to see how it continues to develop and mature. It's crazy to think that there are other forms of morphing surfaces that haven't even been discovered yet that will probably make its way into theatre within the next couple of decades as technology advances.
I have SO MUCH WORK TO DO, and yet I still watched almost this whole video. Projection mapping is absolutely fascinating to me, because it has the ability to transform what was once a building or other structure into something completely new and exciting. When I think of projection mapping, still my favorite example is the projection mapping show at Walt Disney World. An hour after the first firework show, people crowd around the Cinderella Castle to watch their favorite Disney characters fly in front of them, and the castle shift and change before their eyes. I am always excited to see how the art form is being used in different ways to enhance storytelling, particularly lately in characters that used to be animatronics but are now easily powered by projection mapping which actually makes them a lot more realistic. I am excited to see where this industry goes, since it is really just getting started and is already so influential.
I think it's so fascinating that this is such a new form of art in our industry, but that it is already capable of having it's own show like this. That video was breathtaking and exciting in so many ways, and I think it's really great that although it's new and extremely complex, that it's so accessible to the public and its audiences. It's not easy to make something like this happen, and what those artists have done is absolutely incredible, but it really does add a whole new level of fantasy to our already fun and magical world. Disney has been working with Media in really new and exciting ways for years, but MAN has it gotten bigger and better recently. Even more so, I think it lends itself to a way to expand our industry from just those of us who have done theater forever, to those media artists who did other things and then started to creep into theater. It's just a new side of things we're exploring that can only get bigger and better.
It seems that cities around the world are adopting the art of projection mapping and applying it to big events, in this case the 555 anniversary of the city. I love that this is happening and many ideas are coming together to form bigger and better shows. What i love so much about projection mapping is its ability to transform real life objects in =to what ever you want. It gives us the ability to bend reality to tell whatever story we want. I love when they project a buildings history and you are able to see the building go through many changes as it goes through time. this combined with music and timing creates a stellar show. Like Kat said I've gotten to see the projection show at Disney and it blows my mind how they were able to transform the castle into a fire filled fortification to a tower/rocket taking off into the sky. In this show they were able to create so many interesting visuals I'm sure many will be itching to see more. I hope many cities around the world use this technology to tell their story.
I am a girl who grew up sitting by the river watching the video projection to the fountain in Sydney, Australia, fascinated by the magic of technology when they made projection mapping on one of the palace my great grandfather was head engineer, went to Disneyland and noticed last year Disney already moved its target from projection mapping on buildings to wedding cake, and last year witness with my own eye for a bit in at the Rockefeller on Christmas day, and who says media is not great! This technology has come so far since when I was just that little girl sitting by the fountain watching the magic. This thing is really, really, incredibly awesome. I love that although people in our generation still say media is new, but we can definitely see the potential that this will surely become one more part of the world’s history of the arts and I love to see that it’s growing.
It’s really amazing what they can do with projections and in such a relatively short time after making it into an art form. It’s less of just projecting colors and shapes and more about projecting the actual shape of the building in different colors and then making it fall away or slowly rise up piece by piece. And sometimes it really looks like the building was falling apart. This is the first time I’ve seen a successful building projection video; the last one I saw didn’t use much of the existing architecture to show off how cool projections are so you were constantly aware of how much it looked like a projection and not the overall effect. I loved how they would sometimes project only on the windows and then only around the windows or just the lines the building created. The time and effort it must have taken to map out each part is staggering. It’s no wonder these people are at the top of their industry.
I have a lot of thoughts about this show. It started out incredibly strong, the first 2 entries were incredible. They accented the building’s ornateness and size with some wonderful use of intricate patterns. Then I think the abstract blotches were not really doing too much for me on the middle 2 or so displays. It got interesting when figures were introduced in #4 or #5. They were in a few forms, silhouettes, photographic, animated, and made up creatures (humans that had robotic features). The first show to use people was actually a bit creepy, possibly because it felt less organic and just more like humans jumping and facing trying to communicate. The later shows made me think about how watching different actions in a larger scale make me feel. For example what I thought about the scenes where people were floating versus when they were stomping or running. I preferred the calm nature of floating figures. The video that was around the 20 minute mark nailed down the use of figures and the creation of a whimsical environment which I really appreciated. The juxtaposition between the elements of nature and the more robotic figures interacting was wonderful and interesting. It was showing humans being a part of the elements of nature, but at the same time the species as a whole has strayed so far from the natural world.
The iMAPP Bucharest 2.0 event looks spectacular. I'm glad there's a whole conference of people who are working together to not only implement projection mapping on a large scale, but also further the technology and art form by creating new media content that pushes the boundaries of what projection mapping is known for. As the 555th university of the capital of Romania I think this expo was not only a great way to show off the potential of projection mapping, but to do so while highlighting a very interesting city. I had no idea the city housed the Parliament Palace, the worlds second largest headquarters building in the world. While I love these large scale projection mapping events I wish they got more publicity in the U.S. and that creative companies from the states even participated for that matter. As the country that houses Universal Studios, Disney, and many of the large scale businesses that use projection mapping I'm surprised we don't have our own U.S. based projection mapping festival. I think it could be extremely successful if well implemented. A great site for such an event would be a historic iconic site like the Washington Mall. America has so much potential in this projection mapping industry, and I think we should display/celebrate it.
Such a beautiful show, totally worth watching the whole thing! Projection mapping is such a big thing right now, and it's great that this was the way they chose to celebrate such an important anniversary for the city! It's quite symbolic really, a meeting of the old, historical building and of this new, futuristic technology. It's a great way to celebrate yet transform a building and a space, without actually having to do any physical alterations to the edifice. I saw a much more simple version of this on a historical church in Budapest this past winter, as part of the city Christmas Market. It was cool to see how all the people present were captivated by the building's facade as it moved, rippled, twisted and turned. I wish this article had gone more in depth about how a project like this comes to be: how were the companies/groups get chosen, how did the design phase go, what was the tech process like, etc...
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