Effervescent Shadow Bazaar
(2022)
Effervescent Shadow Bazaar is an event I worked on with other students at CMU. Outside of artists, musicians, sound-designers, and staff of WQED Filming Studio gathered to put together this extravagant one night show. The artist team put together installations relative to light and shadow. Our team focused on projection mapping on 3D geometric surfaces using Isadora. Our geometric triptych plays with one: an almost shattered 3D dimensional surface open to any projection, and two: animation depicting prehistoric cave paintings and its juxtaposition to the surface it’s displayed on and the environment its displayed in. Or is it? Maybe the cave paintings were located in the cavemen’s grooviest room. Outside of installation, I had the chance to work with the WQED staff members to see how the studio normally runs in an event setting. I had the chance to help with the event’s documentation using BlackMagic cameras.
Background
There were many drafts that had to be sketched for this installation. These drafts dictated the scale, and the smallest details. It was a type of project where additional implementations weren’t allowed due to how the work was structured. After arriving at an aesthetic, algebra was needed to calculate how everything would fit together. Any error would cause a mismatch, which we wanted to avoid. We used 4X4” plywood for the panels themselves. The protruding triangular parts, which we called “shards”, are made of cardboard and stretched out canvas. The early calculations functioned as blueprints for when we sawed and pieced the shards together. Canvas colored paint was finally applied to the plywood surface for unification. We used Isadora for the projection mapping. Adobe AfterEffects, ProCreate, several software were used to digitially animate the prehistoric cave paintings.