RGB Redacted
A Projection Mapping piece exploring Colour and Noise, made with OpenFrameworks
produced by: Oliver N Blake
Concept
This piece is all about my struggle when it comes to using Colour in my work. It's something I find quite challenging, and will usually defer to Black and White. When using the OpenFrameworks environment, I tend to find myself making sketches and works without colour - I seem to find it stylistically much "cooler" and much more of a go-to. This piece for me was about trying to shake that, and breaking patterns and blocks within my own creativity.
Each of the Main Sections of the work feature explosions of vibrant colours, while each of the glitchy interludes are different ways that the Red, Green and Blue (the components of making colours) are being 'Redacted' from the piece, and stripped away - leaving only Black and White.
The Main sections are also made to be much smoother and organic feeling, using lots of Perlin noise to snake through gradual changes in colour or location, or to slowly swim and spill. In contrast with the flickering interlude sections, which are meant to be more jarring and digital. This suggests something sinister is at play, trying to redact the colour - maybe within the program, maybe within the programmer.
As I say, this work is about trying to address internal blocks when it comes to creativity, and hopefully the struggle of vulnerability and insecurity of not making something I think will be "cool" (read: fitting a certain aesthetic that is generally admired).
Inspiration
Something that really helped me feel connected to this piece was choosing these specific Boxes to project onto. These are 3 different sized Moving Boxes - which is very representative of my life around when this piece was made!
My partner and I had a very stressful house move (during COVID-19), coupled with some other emotionally engulfing issues - so when I sat down to start this piece after coming out the other side of that, projecting onto the generic shapes in my group (2 boxes and a Pyramid), I really struggled to feel connected to it at all or find any inspiration. It was only a few days later, after deciding to use our old Moving Boxes that it really started to take shape.
I was also in a very fortunate situation of having a little projector at home, so I was lucky enough that I could write the piece whilst seeing it come to life. Having that set up did inform some decisions (colour choice, spacing, sizes etc), so I feel very privlidged in this time to have had that.
Technical Challenges
This work was quite technically challenging. There were a lot of lessons that had to be learnt "the hard way" multiple times! Something I really enjoyed was working was Noise. The organic nature it brings to otherwise rigid objects is fantastic to explore. Something else I had to really work with was the Timings. There are a lot of scenes that involve intricate timings across the different boxes, so that was always hard (but enjoyable) to choreograph.
Self Evaluation
Overall, I'm really proud of this work. It was made a very difficult time, and I'm really happy with how it came together. It's unfortunate that the best video camera I had access to was my iPhone, making the final video slightly disappointing quality - that's why I've embedded a Screen Recorded version of the piece below also.
I hope the Concept comes across to the viewer, and that my vulnerability can be felt and connected with.