Installing Without_Within

This weekend I traveled back up to Andover Newton Theological School to begin installing my exhibition, Without_Within, in the Sarly Gallery, which opens this Wednesday. I was anxious to see just how well all my measurements and renderings would hold up against the real space since I was forced to conceive of the site specific projection mapping and installation pieces 190 miles away without access to the site they would inhabit.

DAY ONE

I began by installing what I thought would be the easiest part: my installation piece .windows/Sarly, which consists of theater gels and plexiglass in the wall of windows, transforming it into a stained glass mosaic reminiscent of giant pixels. A few days prior I was able to pick up the special ordered gels from the 4Wall Entertainment warehouse in North Jersey (which I highly recommend if you're looking for theater equipment. Remarkable service and very helpful staff)

Squeegee, spray bottle, and electrical tape in hand, I began adhering them to the windows.

I used a solution of water and dish detergent to create a suction cling, then reinforced it with some very uncooperative electrical tape at the edges. It only took about 17 windows until I figured out a system that worked well!

Viewable from outside and from inside, depending on the time of day and lighting conditions

I wanted also to blend colors, playing with complementary colors that negate out to gray, or unexpected color combinations, so I used plexiglass panels and gels to create layers.

color blending

...Amounting to this!... except what's that on the floor?

Drat. The Velcro I used apparently does not hold up to temperature changes well, and the cold outside had caused it to come unstuck and my purple plexi to take a nosedive. (Interestingly, in keeping with the theme of interiority-exteriority, the plexiglass panels themselves respond to the temperature difference between the inside and outside, warping slightly in the direction of the colder region). I reinforced the inflexible velcro with electrical tape, which... also didn't work. I upped it to Gorilla tape and it seemed we were good to go at that point.

Next, on to what I expected to take majority of the time and have the most hurdles to overcome.

Hurdle 1: the Wall

Problem: I needed to mount my projectors high on a wall into which I could not make any holes. It only had only a picture rail and hooks for hanging 2D pieces. I got some of the appropriate picture rail hooks and modified them to attach to my projector mounts. The trick was that the hooks would cause the projector to tip downward and eventually fall off. So I braced against that torque withs oem shelf brackets that would hopefully help it stay level, and hoped that my measurements were accurate enough to fit snugly to the actual rail and wall.

The real test was to see if it would translate in reality. Thankfully it did!

And so I began mounting what would end up being a ridiculously complex layout of wall mounted paraphernalia...

Shelf for the Mac Mini, 2 projectors, and a box to hold a surge protector and the extra coils of various cables

Hurdle 2: Projecting

Now to make sure that the projectors would actually work in their new wall-mounted locations and allow me to project into the frosted windows...

As you may remember, this is what I was hoping would happen...

And much to my relief, this is what happened!

 My meticulous measurements and mockups paid off, and I was able to line up the projectors with very little difficulty! Phew, big sigh of relief there.

13 hours of install down, time to go to bed and continue in the morning.

DAY TWO

On the second day my first task was the one I was most nervous about in my long distance planning. The interactive part of my project would map the space of the gallery into interactive zones, and translate what happens in those zones into imagery in the frosted windows recessed into the wall.

translating the measurements for the physical windows into pixels pixels so that the projection lines up with the physical windows it will be projected onto.

planning out the interactive zones in front of the windows and how they display in the projected window imagery.

translating all that into code for the Processing sketch that controls the project

 Hurdle 3: Dual Projection Mapping

The next challenge, once the imagery was set and the space was mapped out in the program, was to get it to project into the windows and get both projectors synchronized (one program on one computer controlling two projectors side by side to cover the winder space)

measuring out the parameters of the real space and adjusting my code accordingly 

lining up the projection and masking off the spaces between the windows

This was tricky only for very stupid reasons; Apple does not let you remove the menu bar unless an application is running full screen, but the Processing sketch would not stretch across two screens in fullscreen mode. So I found a program that would hack and dim the menu bar, coloring it black. However then the two screens were out of alignment because one of them ended up with 10 pixels or so of dead space on top and the other didn't. I also was installing this on a Mac Mini that did not have Illustrator, which I needed to use to create the mask for the windows. So I used my Macbook, which has Illustrator installed (and different multi-display resolutions and outputs) and then transferred over to the Mini via USB stick and recalibrated.

view from the outside

In each window there is a different composition of overlaid, semi-transparent colored renderings of the various interactive zones. Each image is then repeated as if in infinite regress toward a vanishing point, giving yet another layer of digitized, perspectival interiority to go with the theme of the show.

My ladder "interacting" 

Hurdle 4: Wiring

The last step was simply to figure out all the wiring issues, tidy up the place, and then hang some 2-D works.

Problem: There was only one outlet within reach just outside the room, and I needed the Kinect and projectors in very specific locations at the other ends of the room. I had to coordinate the lengths of power cords, VGA cables, USB extensions, Kinect cables, and extension cords to reach from the location of the Kinect in the back left corner of the room to the projectors on the wall, and then to the outlet. 

I was pleasantly surprised to discover another outlet that would at least save me going over and around the floor-to-ceiling doorway at the entrance. That shortened a 40 foot extension cord to a 20 footer.

The picture rail actually came in handy here, as I could hook rings to the rail to feed the wire through.

A walkthrough following my trail of wiring

With all that said and done, I hung the 2-D works and adjusted the lighting, and Voila!

Meditation 1.1 (Thusness, Elseness, Omnipresent) hung outside the entryway

Cosmos on Gray 1/0 and 3/0 hung on the wall opposite the projections

light projected out through the window into the courtyard at night

view from outside

Inside view of projection during daylight

inside view of projection during night

Video of me interacting with the projection a bit. Better footage to come soon, but this is a teaser

 With that, the installation is complete, and I eagerly await the opening this Wednesday night! I'll be sure to share photos of the opening with some of my more philosophical musings on the project now that it's all up.

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Without_Within

Without_Within

Eric Valosin

Sarly Interfaith Gallery

Andover Newton 

Theological School

November 2 - December 31, 2014

Reception: Wednesday, 

November 5, 6-8 pm

Without_Within features site specific installations using light, projection and interactive new media, as well as two-dimensional works. These projects reflect the artist's desire to blend old and new media to transform the viewer's perception of a space and immerse the viewer in a participatory, meditative/contemplative environment. The exhibition takes advantage of the Sarly Gallery's architecture to ruminate on themes of interiority-exteriority, and the roles of various mediators for this experience.

My Accidental Studio Day with a Sufi Master

In a couple weeks I have an exhibition opening at Andover Newton Theological School's Sarly Gallery, just outside Boston. I certainly didn't expect my impromptu weekend trip to culminate in nearly receiving a Sufi name!

I'd been preparing for this exhibition largely off site, 190 miles away. After visiting in the summer to take some meticulous and extensive measurements and photographs, I was able to make a mockup of the space in Google Sketchup, and largely plan my installation virtually.

A very eccentric space... with a lot of windows!

my Sketchup model

This allowed me to eventually test out some projection configurations and plot out my installation. I decided to capitalize on the many windows by using them to ruminate on themes of interiority/exteriority. The project would include an interactive projection that would literally bring the viewers into the cubby-hole window spaces, conflating the silhouettes of viewers in different locations in the room into one space that is both interior and exterior (faux exterior windows, frosted over so you can't see out) and also repeated inward and backward in perspective as if reflected by a series of two-way mirrors (I'm developing some other projects using those as well, but that's a story for another day). 

an example of one of the interactive window projections

...which eventually translated into studio mock ups, projecting into faux (faux) windows. (can you have doubly fake windows?)

I also plan to use theater gels to turn the square exterior windows into a sort of pixelated stained glass window. My hope is to light them in such a way that during the day the light from outside brings the color into the room, and at night the color is projected out into the courtyard beyond. The colors themselves will all relate to complementary color schemes, playing on the negation of light and coloration that happens when mixing complements.

a sketch of a possible window configuration

All of this, I hope, will amount to an immersive, interactive experience that will not only physically merge the interior and exterior, but also provide a meditative space in which one can mystically merge interiority and exteriority, with the architectural space and technology inside as mediators.

My proposed title for the show, Without_Within reflects this interplay between the interior and exterior, while referring to the mystic notion of interiority as a path to ultimately (paradoxically) lose the self entirely (being "without the within"). The underscore is an a-grammatical way to relate the two words, leaving all grammatical interpretations open, and also harkening to the contemporary tech language of file naming and hashtags.

I came to a point where I needed to test this out in the space... 

So I traveled up to Massachusetts today to test out some parts if my upcoming installation in the gallery space. When I arrived, much to my (and the gallery director's) surprise, we found the gallery had been converted into a gift shop for what turned out to be a weekend long convention of Sufi mystics!

Inconvenient as it was for my installation efforts, I ended up meeting a Sufi mandala painter, and we naturally ended up getting along very well and she invited me to a presentation that evening.

The presentation turned out to be a message and reading via skype with a renouned Sufi perfect master! I can only describe it as a Sufi version of a sermon and alter call, complete with a crowd of new devotees flocking in front of the computer and projection screen for a blessing! And what's more, the message he delivered was entirely about Mary and Jesus, and how we need to adopt the teachings of Jesus, being wary of those who claim to be his followers but don't live by his example! The Q&A to follow revolved around the second coming of Christ and the ensuing unification when Jesus and a Muslim counterpart would weed out the bad theologies of each respective sect of the 3 Abrahamic traditions (which echoes my knowledge of the motives of Meister Eckhart's teacher, Albert the Great in finding a unifying mystical theology)! It was very weird to listen as he called forward any who wanted to commit themselves to "the promise," knowing that at the end it would technically culminate in a conversion to Islam and reception of a Sufi name, yet thinking that everything they were promising was something I already believed as a Christian!

My mind is still turning this one over....

But at least for now I'll let all this mystical activity swirl around and soak into the atmosphere surrounding my impending installation! Looking forward to getting this all nailed down!

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