A China of Many Senses (Durham, NC, USA)

Project
A China of Many Senses

Location
Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, NC USA

Event
CHAT Festival 2012

Date
February 2012

About This Project
software mural/architectural projection, custom software written in C++/OpenGL/OpenFrameworks, digital video/audio/3d source material.

Bill Seaman, artist, Todd Berreth, designer and programmer.

IEEE Vis 2011 Catalog Description of Project

“A China of Many Senses” is an art piece by Bill Seaman. It is driven by a software engine, written in C++ and OpenGL using the openFrameworks libraries. In real-time, it recombinately composes a library of disparate elements, video and image content, spoken-word phrases, 3d models and musical passages, into an evocative dynamic collage, media landscape and hyper-constructed assemblage. A China of Many Senses specifically juxtaposes imagery from China’s past and present, highlighting the tension of a country rapidly becoming the world’s industrial powerhouse, while coexistently maintaining many of its ancient modes of existence. It frames, orders and builds with these materials, using a vocabulary and grammar of designed behaviors and construction typologies, diagramming and displaying the permutations with standard modes of architectural representation. The effect is to create a projected virtual space with a dizzying sense of logic, scale and balance – an imagined organic and built landscape at once both regimentally ordered and colossally haphazard, filled with both epic and intimate construction and permeated with history.

A China of Many Senses explores the aesthetic potential of utilizing standard architectural visualization techniques and an algorithmically modulated, database-driven virtual environment to create a dynamic poetic space, which may provide suggestive and often unexpected insights into an incredibly relevant and interesting contemporary condition.

The architectural projection is formed from the stitched output of three Christie Roadster 18k lumen projectors, illuminating an overall wall surface of over 3500 sf (32′ x 120′).