THESIS PROJECT 2017 PROJECT TITLE Projection mapping project at Cubbon Park Metro STUDENT:
MANU SHARMA
PROJECT:
Art in Transit
SPONSOR:
Herman Miller
PROGRAM:
Undergraduate Professional Programme
AWARD: GUIDES:
Information Arts and Information Design Practice Amitabh Kumar, Sandeep Aswath, Sujatha Ramesh, Sai Mulpuru.
Copyrights 2016-2017 Student Document Publication (for private circulation only) All Rights Reserved Final Thesis Project (Undergraduate Professional Programme) Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology Bangalore - 560064 Karnataka No part of this document will be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying, scanning, photography and video recording without written permission from the publishers namely Roshan Shakeel and Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore. Written, edited and designed by Manu Sharma Printed at Vinayaka Enterprises, Bangalore
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INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND PLAGIARISM STATEMENT I, MANU SHARMA, hereby declare that the content of this student documentation and final design/artwork submission is my own original work and has not been plagiarised in full or part from previously published/designed/manufactured material or does not even contain substantial propositions of content which have been accepted for an award of any other degree or diploma of any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in this thesis project. I also declare that the intellectual content of this Thesis Project is my own original work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the project’s design and conception or in style and presentation is acknowledged and that this thesis project (or part of it) will not be submitted as assessed work in any other academic course.
COPYRIGHT STATEMENT I, MANU SHARMA, hereby grant Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology the right to archive and to make available my Thesis Project in whole or in part in the institute’s databank and website, and for non-commercial use in all forms of media, now and hereafter known, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act.
Name: Signature: Date:
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ORIGINAL PROPOSAL CONTEXT The project is situated both, conceptually and physically in the realm of public, urban transit, specifically through the vector of metro transit systems. It functions in a space that is largely metaphorical and reactionary, The practitioner sees himself as being in a unique position to both participate in and comment upon a public arts intervention. Hence, simply existing within the pertinent sphere during a period of flux (such as one born of the implications of a festival such as Nerulu) becomes a large part of the logic that feeds into the working of the project.
POSITION The project is perceived as primarily being a vehicle for the practitioner to respond to the space he is in. Coming into video art from a background that is chiefly settled in the realm of static communication, I do not wish to confine the project in any way where aesthetic identity is concerned. It draws inspiration chiefly from the work of video projection artist Tony Oursler and from the contemporary glitch art movement as well. Essentially, the project treats the moving image as both, palette and cryptograph, to be applied and disseminated using “metro� as a key.
JOURNEY AND PROCESS I joined Art in Transit, as I was keen on working in a public sphere and wanted to create art that would be seen and interacted with by people in real-time. The project began with a two-week immersion period where I began using glitch and .gif art. The expression fielded by the work produced at this stage in the project was simple ideas. To work towards yielding a cogent product on the 18th, I began to experiment directly in the metro space I was working in. In this stage of the project, I began using Video Projection Tool as a means for me to projection map my videos onto surfaces. The initial stages of the project involved using screenshots from movies and videos as well as frame-by-frame Photoshop art to create GIFS. Later, VPT allowed for working with video blending and projection mapping.
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The intent for my output on the 18th (Nerulu) became to produce three video and audio pieces, one each dealing with the site, our intervention and the causality of time within the space. All three of these would then be combined to create one video projection that my audience would encounter. Through working in the metro station, I became apparent of an imminent and overarching layer to the narrative I.e.- rhythm or the concept of time. All elements at play in the metro station such as the arrival of commuters; the announcements of the arrivals and floor maintenance are governed by rhythm. Even the intervention that I am a part of occurred within a timeframe for each of us students and in the larger sense, for the project as a whole. With this in mind, the change I introduced to the project was the presence of a narrator. Through my experiments, I feel that a narrator with human features greeting the audience is a far more engaging experience than encountering a narrative on loop with no definite entry or exit point. The presence of eyes and a mouth and the inclusion of the human voice generate a much greater response, as it seems to make the encounter a more personal one. The narrator, as I envisioned it is a face within the motif of a clock, onto which I would project my own features and voice to engage the audience with.
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This the plan I followed 13th Monday(Day) *Fix curtain Find spot that allows projector to project on the whole of one wall Acquire someone’s camera for documentation purposes. Collect background footage responding to the metro itself. (Night) Record a response to the space and create video + audio to project. Create the base motif for my narrator. 14th Tuesday(Day) Project and document the video. Make any edits. Collect background footage pertinent to the period of intervention we are engaging in. (Night) Record a response and a create video and audio to project 15th Wednesday(Day) Project and document the video. Make any edits. Record background footage pertinent to my role within the project and the space. (Night) Record a response and create video and audio to project. 16th Thursday(Day) Project and document the video. Make any edits. Combine all 3-response videos and test it. 5
(Night) Introduce any final footage to the consolidated video 17th Friday(Day) Test run the final movie. Make any necessary changes. *The introduction of the curtain to the space was meant to seal it off as one microcosm within the larger sphere of the metro. This curtain was later replaced by a door. MEDIA USED Over the course of the project I worked with two projectors and multiple sets of speakers. The software used in the creation and the projection mapping of the videos included VPT, Adobe After Effects and Audacity for audio editing. The process of shooting the projection video for the narrators face involved wearing white paint on my face against a stark black background. The lines that the narrator speaks to his audience were lines I wrote in response to the criteria I decided for each video. While I was editing the audio, I had a father- time like figure in mind and wanted to give it a booming and spacey voice. I experimented with male and female pitch as well.
LEARNING OUTCOMES AND FURTHER WORK Through the course of the project, I have developed a basic understanding of projection mapping software; it’s applications and limitations. While it is cursory at best right now, I feel enthusiastic to develop it further and to open up new possibilities for my work such as using sensors to improve interactivity and dry ice as a medium to project on. I would like my project to exist in its current state as an experiential space.
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Entering Art in Transit for my final project, I was eager to work in public spaces but did not want to do murals or other illustration work. I wanted to engage my audience in a new manner.Living in a growing digital age, I feel people are now more keenly keyed into screens and other digital media and this will only increase. Owing to this, I wanted to explore digital and video art and saw working in the public sphere as the perfect oppertunity to implement these.
Our first assignment was to create something visceral that would lead inwards in search of defenition. An analogical reference point was to ponder the conciousness of an obstinate cow. In response to this, I too looked inwards and tried to create a moment stuck in time where the actors and actions were purely instinctual.
In the first few weeks of the project, we were given various exercises and took park in walks at Cubbon Park as well. These helped me grasp a better understanding of not only working in public spaces but also of video art and softwares I could use.
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Our second assignment was centered around soundscapes and we visited Cubbon Park in order to collect sounds. We were divided into groups of two and travelled a set distance from a given point, collecting sounds along the way. Later we also responded to each others’ soundscapes.
Our next assignment involved reading a piece on Richard Serra’s site specific sculpture “Tilted Arc” and, through an understandingof the controversy surrounding it’s disruptive nature, responding by proposing changes to the water cooler at minsk square.
The crux of my proposed intervention was to turn the water cooler into a giant flower pot. I felt that this would undo some of the damage Bangalore’s green cover has borne due to the Metro project. Water would also be easily avaliable.
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Our fourth assignment began with an interaction session with a Dhrupad practitioner. She explained the concept of a Jugalbandhi- two distinct parts coming together to reveal a latent third element.After this, we were broken up into groups of two and asked to work towards building something along the lines of a Jugalbandhi. By this point, I was working chiefly with video and glitch and wanted my portion of the project to depict a glitch not only literally but also in spirit. To this end, I used a clip of a cat being devoured by rats and created a glitched .gif not unlike a stop motion video. My group mate created a sound file. This marked the end of our initial classes and after this, we proceeded to work on site in a big way. Images from the .gif I made.
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At this point in the project, we began inhabiting our sites. The site i chose to work in was a small cleaning equipment storage space next to the storage room used by the Arti in Transit project at the Cubbon Park Metro Station. I was visualising a project that used audio and video and the rooms’ apparent dinginess and crampedness made it feel like a pocket dimension- a space contained within and yet without the vastness and antisceptic cleanliness of the metro station. This appealed to me and I quickly decided to conduct all my experiments with projection mapping within this room.
Frames from early .gifs.
Finding viable positions for the projector became a consistent challenge of working in the metro station.
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NERULU FESTIVAL “Nerulu� means shade in Kannada and this festival was held in and around Cubbon Park to celebrate the trees of Bangalore. As elaborated upon in the proposal, my project for the Nerulu festival was to be a vehicle to express my developing feelings and opinions regarding working within the space of public urban transit, specifically centering around Cubbon Park Metro Station. To create my narrator, I filmed my face against a stark black background and then distorted the result on Adobe After Effects.
My painted face as seen poking though a black sheet. 12
A prototype of my narrator. I projected onto a square plank.
The final iteration of my narrators’ face.
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The projection broken up into to layers. After the the end of the first festival held at Cubbon Park, I began wondering how I would further enhance my project. I felt that the best way to move ahead would be to increase the interactivity of the project with my audience. I didn’t want the involvement of the audience in the room to be static but rather, I wanted people t have to move around, look at various surfaces to piece together what was happening and so on and so forth.
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FURTHER WORK I decided to continue with the idea of interpreting and narrating my experiences within the metro but dropped the narrator in the moptif of a clock. Instead, I began working on a project where I would place my audience within the mind of my narrator. I would treat my space as an enclosure of my subconcious with different material projected on up to three walls. This would essentially become a show timed in tandem between multiple projectors and would force the audience to keep shifting their vision from one wall to the next. Furthermore, I decided to undertake certain changes in order to improve the cohesiveness of my space with my project. The first change I implemented was the painting of my room in a manner that evokes a “physical glitch� on the surface of the walls. This adds a layer of complexity to my projections and demands more involvement from my audience where discerning the projected image is concerned.
One laptop and projector are mapping at an angle, so as to project on two walls (front and left). Another laptop and projector are mapping one wall straight ahead (right).
As there is no actual physical link between the two systems, synchronization became a new challenge.
The second major change I implemented to my space is the presence of a door. While the curtain I used earlier would let in enough light and sound to consider the space a simple expention of the metro station outside, the door that stands there now cements it as a room unto itself. 15
At this time, I began working with processing (java coding). The purpose I concieved for my experiments with coding was to implement code to assist in glitching or otherwise manipulating my images and videos. Two .gifs I made in this period. The one on the bottom was created by experimenting with processing.
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A frame from a music video I made using a pixel sorting code created on processing.
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Frames from a slit - screening program made on processing.
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FESTIVAL OF STORIES Before beginning to formulate a plan for what I wanted to create for the Festival of Stories, I painted the inside of my room in a manner that evoked an “analog glitch”. Projecting on such a surface creates an effect where it is easier to view the material presented in certain parts and harder in certain others. This demands more attention from my audience and therefore adds a layer of interactivity as well as a literal layer to the video presentation. After painting this space and installing a door, I began to see it as more of a “pocket dimension” than ever before. The room no holds nearly no relation to the vastness and cleanliness of the metro outside, apart from the appaent geographic relationship. The space is now a “control room” of sorts, where I project my understanding of the metro space and in this manner, adopts more of a crucible- esque position in the larger framework of Art in Transit’s intervention at Cubbon Park. The idea of the crucible brings up architect and social philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s “Panopticon” - a central guard tower in a circular prison around it, thereby allowing the watchmen within to monitor every prison cell at all times. Our narrator then shifts from being a casual presence ithin the video to occupying more of a gaoler’s position. Keeping in tow with the idea of the Panopticon, his physical appearence is now inspired by the Greek titan Panoptes the many eyed. The purpose of this video is two fold- one, to tell the audience that they are no longer ithin the confines of the metro space and are now within a pocket dimension or a “Simulacrum”. The second is to stress on the causality of time within the metro space.
Frames from my final video.
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INFLUENCES A great deal of inspiration for the forms, textures and glitchy nature of my work during Art in Transit, 2017 was drawn from the contemporary glitch art movement. While creating a glitch in itself defeats the purpose of a glitch as an error must be automatic and not man made to truly qualify as an error, I have drawn heavily from the aesthetic qualities of the movement. The work of the video projection artist Tony Oursler has also been very important for me as his practice is where I got the idea to film my face and distort the result. Oursler himself strays away from full sentences and instead often condenses thought to single words or non - congruent fragments of language.
Above: A VCR error Left: An installation by Tony Oursler.
Some of the animation work of youtube animators David Firth and Cyriak have a “moving collage” quality to it and this has also found it’s way into my work. In fact, Firth has been a great influence on me since high school. When he uses this collage style of animation, it compliments the sardonic nature of his content perfectly to become something of a mockery of the themes he discusses. Finally, none of my Java work wound be possible without the tutorials of Daniel Shiffman, one of the chief designers of the program Processing. Shiffman breaks coding down to simple applications of the English language along with basic logical operators and this easygoing approach has made all the difference to me.
Not Stanley by David Firth.
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REFLECTIVE STATEMENT Upon entering the realm of video art, I had very little to go on as I have no prior experience with Digital Media Art whatsoever. The logic, then, of entering this realm in the first place was two fold - one, I wanted to use a medium that people are looking at and, in today’s world, we rarely look at something longer than we do a screen. Two, I wished to learn something completely new to me. Coming from an IAIDP background which is based entirely in static communication, video projection is most alien to my practice and made for a novel learning experience. No longer could I simply figure things out at home. I now had to be on site to test out my projections in realtime. Furthermore, I had to think about my space as much as my content and the room itself evolved with my project. Working with code was another major challenge for me and this project has been made especially difficult by tertiary factors such the time spent travelling to Cubbon Park and working in a tight, enclosed and poorly ventilated space in the summer heat. I am, however, happy for this experience as it has taught me a great deal about how to pursue learning an edifice. The rigor and regularity of working seven days a week in this manner, has created a mental paradigm for me where I exist largely within my work. The nature of this work evokes a great deal of interest for me and it has been a fulfilling experience to commit myself to this project at a stretch. I have gained some skill in video projection and sound art but more than that, the desire to keep learning and applying this learning to my work is probably my most important take away from this project.
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THESIS PROJECT 2017 PROJECT TITLE Projection mapping project at Cubbon Park Metro STUDENT:
MANU SHARMA
PROJECT:
Art in Transit
SPONSOR:
Herman Miller
PROGRAM:
Undergraduate Professional Programme
AWARD:
Information Arts and Information Design Practice
Final Examination Panel COMMENTS:
Examiner 1 (name and signature): Examiner 2 (name and signature): Examiner 3 (name and signature): Date:
Academic Dean:
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MANU SHARMA Final Thesis Project 2017 (Undergraduate Professional Programme) Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology Bangalore - 560064 Karnataka