Augmented Projection

Illuminated interventions

61. Krzysztof Wodiczko's Warsaw Projection (2005) augmented the façade of the Zachęta National Gallery to focus on the unequal social status of women. Videos of women supporting an entablature inscribed Artibus (“for the arts”) were presented as architectural caryatids. (Image © Krzysztof Wodiczko, courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co., New York.)

Brief

Design a projected decal for a physical place or object. Your response could be a time-based display of graphics or video specifically composed to illuminate something other than a blank projection screen. Your imagery might relate to (and elicit new meanings from) otherwise banal architectural features in a wall, such as a power outlet, doorknob, water spigot, elevator buttons, or window frame. You might design a projection for a specific object, or, if you are able, for a dynamic site such as a vehicle or a performer's body.

Sketch some poetic or playful concepts for imagery that relates to the geometric, structural, historical, or political features of your site. Create your concept in code, and project your imagery onto your site or object, taking special care to document it. If your design requires precise alignment between virtual and physical spaces, you'll need a tool for projector calibration and keystone correction. Consider libraries like Keystone (for Processing), ofxWarp (for openFrameworks), Cinder-Warping (for Cinder), or software like Millumin or TouchDesigner.

Learning Objectives

Review techniques for working with projectors

Employ code and light to create relationships between real and virtual, physical and digital

Design and realize a site-specific artistic concept or experiment

Variations

Reinterpret a classic arcade game such as Pong, Snake, Qix, or Pac-Man so that it uses a specific wall as a playing field. Incorporate the wall's windows and other features into the game as obstacles.

Create an audiovisual presentation in which features of a real environment are activated by colored projections, synchronized to music.

Create an “in-situ data visualization” that projects information about a site onto that site. This could take the form of a superimposed “x-ray,” datagraph, political commentary, etc.

Use a physics library, such as Box2D, to orchestrate realistic-looking “collisions” between your projected graphics and the actual physical features of your site.

Give consideration to scale. Small is OK.

Use computer vision to assist with feature detection, projector calibration, and alignment.

Create an ecosystem of virtual creatures using simulation principles such as flocking. Have the creatures respond to the features of your chosen wall.

Making It Meaningful

A wide range of new meanings awaits when an illuminated virtual layer is superimposed onto the physical world. Projection can operate as a commentary or a critique, an intervention to probe the historical or political dimensions of a building or monument. In other uses, the projection is a site-specific information visualization, revealing the internal structures of places or objects, the activities that occur in relation to them, or the resources required in their operation. In performance contexts, projections have created new opportunities for responsive set designs, shadow-play, and choreographies of “digital costumes”: responsive, projected displays that are tightly coupled to a performer's body and movements. Augmented projections range from spectacular public illusions that make buildings appear to shimmer, to intimate poetic gestures at the scale of the human face.

The key challenge is to create a strongly motivated relationship between real and virtual: between the projected light and the specific person, place, or thing onto which it is projected. Exemplary works accomplish this through a combination of both formal and conceptual engagement with the site. Choices about what to project on, and what to project on it, are made simultaneously.

62. In Michael Naimark's Displacements (1980), a slowly rotating motion picture of a fabricated (and inhabited) living room is projected back onto the selfsame objects, which have been painted white.

63. In Sunset Solitaire (2007), Joe McKay performs on custom software to create a projection that continually “matches” the sunset.

64. Nuage Vert (2008) by HeHe (Helen Evans and Heiko Hansen) visualizes a power station's energy consumption with a projected laser outline.

65. In Scenic Jogging (2010), Jillian Mayer enters a landscape projected from a moving vehicle.

66. Apparition (2004), a dance performance by Klaus Obermaier and the Ars Electronica Futurelab, uses computer vision to project imagery onto Desiree Kongerod and Robert Tannion.

67. Keyfleas (2013) was an interactive projection developed by a first-year undergraduate, Miles Hiroo Peyton. A flock of small creatures appear to inhabit the surface of a computer keyboard, swarming to investigate keys as they are pressed.

68. In Pablo Valbuena's influential Augmented Sculpture (2006–2007), a collection of simple rectangular volumes form the physical base for a virtual projection, which appears to transform its underlying geometry.

69. Delicate Boundaries (2006) by Christine Sugrue presents an interaction in which projected organisms “leave the screen” and climb onto a viewer's outstretched arm, detected by an overhead camera.

70. In Karolina Sobecka's Wildlife (2006), a running tiger is projected from a moving car onto urban surfaces. The tiger's speed is proportional to the speed of the car's wheels, as determined by a sensor; when the car stops, the tiger stops also.

Additional Projects

Emily Andersen et al., The Illuminator, 2012–2020, site-specific projection.

AntiVJ (Romain Tardy and Thomas Vaquié), O (Omicron), 2012, sound and site-specific projection, Hala Stulecia, Wrocław, Poland.

Chris Baker, Architectural Integration Tests, 2009, online video.

Toni Dove, Mesmer: Secrets of the Human Frame, 1990, computationally driven slide installation.

Eric Forman, Perceptio Lucis, 2009, video projector, software, and painted wood form, New York.

Benjamin Gaulon and Arjan Westerdiep, DePong, 2003, projected game, Groningen, Netherlands.

GMUNK (Bradley Munkowitz), BOX, September 2013, video, 5:15.

Michael Guidetti, Bounce Room, 2009, watercolor on canvas with animated digital projection, Jancar Jones Gallery, Los Angeles.

Andreas Gysin and Sidi Vanetti, Casse, 2006, projection, sound, and speakers.

YesYesNo, Night Lights, 2011, interactive light projection, Auckland Ferry Terminal, Auckland.