Nextfest: Niteclub (Fairytales & Nightmares)

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Via Flickr:
This second round of Nextfest photos is from the Fairytales & Nightmares event put on June 16, 2012.

I joined Elijah Lindenberger & Erin Gruber to setup and create a projection atmosphere for the evening. Held at the Artery, we spent the day setting up four different projectors around the venue. One helped showcase some of Erin’s artwork, which was powered by my little BenQ paired to her iPad 2 with VGA adapter. A second pointed onto a side wall for experimenting with projection mapping onto the oversized clock & ghostly cellophane figures we inherited. Erin used Isadora on her 27″ iMac to power the mapping.

I setup my MacBook Pro with the Kinect, creating a silhouette image on another wall. We experimented with placement of the Kinect, but ultimately found we were limited by the stock length of the USB cable. It still turned out well, and I threw in a bit of Twitter magic using Quartz Composer to create the “creepy wall”. Originally I had it configured to download #nextfest-related Twitter pics right in the composition, but it turned out to be buggy. I instead opted to use a temporary folder that QC scanned periodically, and then saved images manually to it throughout the night. That’s one advantage of live video performance vs installation!

Finally, Eli setup his MacBook Pro with the fourth projector used as a backdrop to one of the performance stages. Using his mad VJ skills and a custom Isadora setup, he kept the cool visuals flowing right until the end of the night.

This was my first Nextfest, so it was great to get out and take part in such a great local art scene! The openness to the different types of performances and styles was tremendous, and made our experiments feel tremendously valued. I shot a few photos of the performers, they were all exceptionally great!

If you’re interested in adding a bit of projection flare to your next event, our trio would love to be a part of it. Get in touch through the usual means (@jole, jole.ca/contact, flickrmail, whatever floats your boat).