MAPMAPMAP

As promised, an update into my adventures in video mapping with Jaygo Bloom at the VRC. The two day workshop saw the small group of us (three in total) video map onto cardboard boxes in the Centerspace. Thoroughly enjoyable and a chance to get a hands on experience with some of the technology which makes these visual spectacles possible. There's a lot of "visual indulgence" in video mapping, as it's often employed by VJ's but when applied in an installation based environment it can heighten the visual language of the piece being shown.

First off, apologies for the poor quality video and image, I was a little ill-prepared and only captured images using my iPhone. However a fellow video mapper at the workshop brought a SLR, so I will update with links when he puts up the images. Quality of image aside, the above video demonstrates the high level of interaction between the physical space and projected environment. At this juncture in my Masters I see this as a method of contextualising modernism within the present and giving it relevance using the technologies of the "future".

My first semester has been dominated by an ever broadening attempt to "understand" modernism, but one must draw a line between looking at the Smithsons and dissecting The Communist Manifesto. Modernism commands contextualisation within socioeconomic history but yet when you look at many of Gillespie Kidd & Coia's buildings the movement is applied as a style. It seems as the movement is diluted down from Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier the utopian agenda is adapted and altered, which is why I refer to it as a "style" rather than a movement. We did have our moments of glory with developments such as Robin Hood Gardens but I feel we often misappropriate the values of modernism to a building which carries the distinct style. This is very much a thought-process in motion, and perhaps when I wake-up tomorrow and gaze upon my pictures of St Bride's I will lament on this notion.

I have digressed slightly, but my post still relates to the application of video mapping in my practice. If anything it can be used to highlight the irony and contradictions within the modernist movement, specifically Scotland's attempts triumphed by Gillespie, Kidd & Coia.

For my contribution to the video mapping I created a 3D object which was lit in Maya. When mapped on to a white plinth it was gradually illuminated with a light that does not exist. The creation of a fiction within a virtual environment can serve two purposes in my work: juxtaposing reality against the forgotten fictions of modernism and the creation of a narrative which only exists within the viewer's pre-conceived notions of the history of modernism.

I'm on to something, I just don't yet know exactly what it is.

Links, links, links:-

http://www.antivj.com/ (video mapping artists extraordinaire)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamvlog/sets/72157625462044176/ (my Flickr set of the video mapping workshop)