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The projector as instrument

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Abstract

The projects presented in this paper address two issues. The first issue is about the act of interactivism of liberating the projector, and the subsequent design considerations of taking a certain technology out of its intended context, and the issue of breaking out of the ‘frame’. The second issue is about how video material through personal projection becomes a human output modality, potentially enabling a new and exciting form of audiovisual expression. This restores the balance of the enormous amount of images (still and moving) we take from out environment, but rarely give back. To address this asymmetry, the Videowalker project has been developed, as an instrument and an idea. It aims to address the urban space and the natural environment with audiovisual material, responding and reflecting on the context. Through the project the trend of portable projectors is anticipated, with the explicit aim to investigate how this technology can be used as an expressive human output modality. This means that a strong emphasis in the development and design processes is put on the interface as well as the audience experience. The paper describes the background of the project and its approaches, and experiences and reflections on a range of instantiations/performances with the instrument in Spain, The Netherlands and Australia since 2003. The technology of the set-up is described in enough detail to enable others to replicate the system. Related projects are described and compared, and the notion of Videowalk is placed in an artistic historic context. From the experiments and events a number of issues have come up, and identified as the most important design parameters to research were the shape of the projection and the nature of the audiovisual content.

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Notes

  1. Max is a visual programming language, object based and low level. MSP is the sound manipulating part, and Jitter the real-time video manipulating part. See http://www.cycling74.com.

  2. See http://www.pecha-kucha.org/cities/Sydney.

  3. See http://www.kitchenbudapest.hu/en/node/578.

  4. See http://www.criticalpath.org.au/SEAM_screenings.html.

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Acknowledgments

Many thanks to the curators and venues of the presentations: Sydney Pecha Kucha (Marcus Trimble and Sarah Hearne), the SEAM festival (organisers Margie Medlin of Critical Path and Samantha Spurr of UTS) and the In Temperance laneway project (curator Mark Titmarsh). Thanks to Stephanie and Thomas for demonstrating the laneway video audience instrument. Many thanks to Frank Maguire and Alejandra Mery-Keitel for taking some of the photographs of the SEAM performance and Martin Fox for video camera and editing (SEAM performance) and Jason McDermott (camera at Pecha Kucha and SEAM).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, University of Technology, Sydney, P.O. Box 123 Broadway, Sydney, NSW, 2007, Australia

    Bert Bongers

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  1. Bert Bongers
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Correspondence to Bert Bongers.

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Bongers, B. The projector as instrument. Pers Ubiquit Comput 16, 65–75 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-011-0378-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-011-0378-0

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