TDC takes projection mapping to the street
Published: ASIA
AUSTRALIA: This year’s White Night Melbourne featured a unique projection mapping showcase from Technical Direction Company (TDC). Catering for a five storey high and 70m long canvas adorned with street art from several graffiti artists, TDC deployed Barco HDX Flex projectors and mapped content using MadMapper software. The ‘world’s first’ graffiti-mapping exhibit formed one of the highlights of the 12-hour White Night Melbourne 2015 event.
‘With a stunning and expanded event landscape, White Night Melbourne 2015 featured local, national and international artists and works from Australia, France, Canada, Greece, Portugal, India and the United Kingdom,’ explained White Night Melbourne artistic director, Andrew Walsh. ‘TDC is clearly no stranger to world first uses of projection mapping tech or, for that matter, to White Night, having been one of our trusted technology service providers for a number of years now.’
The centrepiece of the exhibit was Sofles – Graffiti Mappe, an interactive mural project curated by Juddy Roller exploring the interconnected nature of street art, technology and the online frontier. It combined 3D video mapping, traditional street art and graffiti, executed by Australian born artist, Sofles.
‘TDC provided Barco HDX Flex projectors, lenses and control system as well as on-site technical support for this and other areas at the festival,’ explained Brad Williams, regional manager, Victoria at TDC. ‘The load-in times were incredibly tight indeed, yet it was a true delight to work on such a groundbreaking street art project. The merging of street art with the latest projection mapping tech created a visual spectacular that is clearly going to set a trend for future projects. These types of projects always help our team to test the technologies that we use to the absolute limit, which means that we are constantly using them in new and exciting ways.’
‘The façade had quite a lot of negative space that helped with motion designers to have creativity and freedom to design the piece,’ added Shaun Hassock, owner of Juddy Roller, who worked closely with the production team during the four-day set up. ‘The narrative includes peace, war, technological advancement to ultimate destruction and re-birth – and TDC was absolutely vital to the entire project in bringing Sofles’ work to life! TDC were already a known and trusted partner of White Night. Plus, animation artist Grant Osborne already knew TDC, so naturally we wanted to work with them for 3D projection mapping.’
Mr Osborne mapped content using MadMapper video mapping software, while TDC assisted by giving pixel space to create content within, and used the internal Barco HDX-W20 Flex 20,000 lumens projectors warp function to correct the content.
‘I had always worked with street artists as a project manager and creative director, so White Night Melbourne was an amazing opportunity to bring it all together, where we created the world first graffiti mapping – something that had never been done before,’ Mr Hossack concluded. ‘And something that we think left a deep and lasting impression on the Melbourne skyline long after the lights went out at this year’s festival.’