Alight Festival & Fak’ugesi African Digital Arts Festival- British Council/Connect ZA
Following a British Council/Connect ZA invitation to participate at the inaugural Alight Festival and the Fak’ugesi African Digital Arts Festival in Johannesburg, we planned to animate the streets of Braam with the use of video projections in public spaces.
The British Council/Connect ZA team gathered a group of aspiring digital artists to help create the work and arranged a shoot with the talented young dancers from Moving into Dance.
With only 2 days we created and installed the artworks, workshopping ideas and techniques for projection mapping and imaginative use of structures with our team of young international artists.
Together we devised 3 interventions: a huge 20m high projection onto an adjacent tower block; projections onto the entrance to the Tshimologong Innovation Precinct (where the Alight and Fak’ugesi festivals were held); and a number of roaming handheld projections.
Taking inspiration from the architecture of the buildings, after noticing a column of windows that ascended the tower and split our projection surface into 2 sides, we asked the dancers to improvise a short theatrical performance against a wall, imagining what or who would be on the other side. We then projected a dancer on each side of the tower, randomly mixing the performances so that they would interact through ‘the wall’. What emerged was a powerful artwork that engaged emotionally with the audience and appeared to address love, loneliness, gender and equality.
At the entrance of Tshimologong we used animations and film gathered from the workshops to create dynamic live video mapping that was operated by the workshop participants.
Three pico handheld projectors were loaded with short loops of the dancers and were operated by our ‘agents’, circulating through the audience. The images could be found on ceilings, walls, floors and often onto audience members themselves.
Alight Festival & Fak’ugesi African Digital Arts Festival- British Council/Connect ZA
Following a British Council/Connect ZA invitation to participate at the inaugural Alight Festival and the Fak’ugesi African Digital Arts Festival in Johannesburg, we planned to animate the streets of Braam with the use of video projections in public spaces.
The British Council/Connect ZA team gathered a group of aspiring digital artists to help create the work and arranged a shoot with the talented young dancers from Moving into Dance.
With only 2 days we created and installed the artworks, workshopping ideas and techniques for projection mapping and imaginative use of structures with our team of young international artists.
Together we devised 3 interventions: a huge 20m high projection onto an adjacent tower block; projections onto the entrance to the Tshimologong Innovation Precinct (where the Alight and Fak’ugesi festivals were held); and a number of roaming handheld projections.
Taking inspiration from the architecture of the buildings, after noticing a column of windows that ascended the tower and split our projection surface into 2 sides, we asked the dancers to improvise a short theatrical performance against a wall, imagining what or who would be on the other side. We then projected a dancer on each side of the tower, randomly mixing the performances so that they would interact through ‘the wall’. What emerged was a powerful artwork that engaged emotionally with the audience and appeared to address love, loneliness, gender and equality.
At the entrance of Tshimologong we used animations and film gathered from the workshops to create dynamic live video mapping that was operated by the workshop participants.
Three pico handheld projectors were loaded with short loops of the dancers and were operated by our ‘agents’, circulating through the audience. The images could be found on ceilings, walls, floors and often onto audience members themselves.