Photo Courtesy TLS Productions, Inc.The DLectricity Festival of Art & Light is an annual projection mapping, lighting, and sound art installation that took place in September at the front entrances of the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) and the Detroit Public Library (DPL).
P.O.V.—the 3D projection mapping part of the festival—was but one installation of many that took place during the nighttime event that featured more than 35 world renowned and emerging artists whose works illuminated Midtown Detroit for two evenings.
Presented by DTE Energy and produced by Mindfield, production, creative design services, and equipment for P.O.V. were provided by TLS Productions, Inc. and XL Video. “DLectricity is modeled after other Nuit Blanche festivals known for bringing the best light- and technology-based arts to major cities like Paris, Rome, Toronto, New York, and for a second time, Detroit,” says Bill Fitzgerald, director of business development for Mindfield. With “perception” as the overall theme of the festival, P.O.V. was a seven-minute show that featured two actors interacting with the architecture of the DIA and DPL facades.
“Following rough creative guidelines given by the DLectricity board to ‘give us art’ in a story with clear essence and purpose, Mindfield presented several ideas, and the board chose the theme of perception,” says Fitzgerald, adding that the Mindfield team, led by creative director Mike Dryden, brainstormed and developed a 40-frame storyboard presentation about how perception is driven by outside influences, rather than the first-person, and how these influences are internalized and form moral structure. “The stories would be told from a first-person point of view and demonstrate how aspects of everyday life are formed from media and one’s environment,” adds Fitzgerald. “The characters featured in each of the two videos are shown to be coming from a middle ground that includes their peers. This is demonstrated by the characters becoming a multiplication of themselves, rather than challenging those P.O.V.s as an individual.”
Once storyboards were approved, production began in August, including laser-mapping the building facades to get accurate dimensions. “Other challenges came from deciding when to match the facades or just project over them as if flat screens,” says Fitzgerald. “The application of the white paper inside of the windows to make them ‘reflect’ the projections was done over three days just before the event, using local prop artists. Finding music that matched the videos was also a big challenge.”
Photo Courtesy TLS Productions, Inc.Carl Kedzierski, marketing and new business development for TLS Productions, notes that his team got involved to provide lighting and audio support “to fully encompass the remaining sections of both buildings, thereby creating an immersive experience of sight and sound for attendees. Originally, the plan was to match lighting color palettes to video color schemes, but the decision was made to instead have various artists create their own concepts and subsequent art for each installation, thus leading to better end results with more creative depth.”
The design process for TLS started with a long list of video shots that would influence the lighting and sound design. The TLS team started meetings as early as possible with Mindfield, helping to get a jumpstart on the creative process leading up to the two-night event, the goal of which was to fully engage the front entrances of the DIA and the DPL.
“The first concern was to make sure the lighting did not distract and become the star of the show,” says lighting designer and production manager Robert Glowacki of TLS. “Rather it was created and utilized to enhance the project. The second concern was: How do you use two of the most beautiful structures in Detroit to your advantage? So right away my thought, being a Detroit native and resident, was to show people that there is beauty in Detroit, and that, too often, national media reports only on the bad news that exists in the city, not the good things. Detroit is a growing and thriving community, and a home for art and artists. That is what a lot of the P.O.V. content speaks to.”
Once video media, concepts, and thoughts started to flow, the new TLS headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan was used for preprogramming and preproduction. An off-white cyclorama and parts of the lighting rig were used to build cues. “The intention during pre-production was to build an overall stack of looks and movements and then, once onsite, make adjustments to the overall appearance, thus creating a cohesive and smooth-flowing final show,” says Glowacki.
It's DLectric
Photo Courtesy TLS Productions, Inc.Onsite, conversations began with the DIA director and curators, Kedzierski says, “with the specific goal in mind of not compromising any of the art that existed out in front of the DIA. This became something that was always on the minds of those involved with the P.O.V. installation. As the sun set the evening before day one, Robert began stepping through each look and movement, altering the various looks and movements in accordance with the architecture, making color changes to better match video, and of course, perfecting the timing of all elements.” The show ran via SMPTE timecode, engineered and provided by XL Video, running every six minutes and 45 seconds from 7 p.m. to 12 a.m.
“Our team at TLS worked with XL Video tirelessly into the night before day one of the event, which was an interesting experience all by itself, to be the only ones on the streets of Detroit, knowing that the next day the collaborative efforts of all were to be viewed by an estimated 100,000 event attendees,” says Glowacki. “Some of the challenges were making sure to not bleed too much into the projection, instead making it look like one interrelated image, and the fact that the view of the buildings was blocked by trees, power lines, and other items, led to a lot of walking around to make sure all working elements were behaving properly.”
For the video projection, XL Video had the challenge of creating wireless, synchronized projection mapping on both buildings, with the signal originating from a single video control space. The projection surface of the library is approximately 120'x70', with seven arched and recessed balconies that pose challenges for alignment and dealing with shadows. The DIA projection surface is 80'x60', and in front sits Rodin’s The Thinker, directly in the projection path.
Photo Courtesy TLS Productions, Inc.“Mindfield provided 3D laser scans of the actual buildings, and so we were able to create 3D projection simulations in Maxon Cinema 4D software,” says XL Video US media manager German Perl. “This allowed us to simulate the light distribution and to choose the best solutions for projection distances, lens focal lengths, and light output. Based on these simulations, we could confidently choose the best projectors for the project and the budget.”
The projectors ended up being Barco HDX-W20 Flex units; stack and lens corrections were made by using its built-in warp engines. Playback and final mapping was done with Dataton Watchout software on XL Video media servers, and the playback units were located across the street and synchronized using a wireless network bridge. Watchout also provided synchronous audio playback and the corresponding timecode for audio and lighting. Leslie Dillingham is the XL Video senior account executive who worked on this project.
“The resulting narrative in the videos was enough to allow people to form their own opinion, allowing for empathy and reevaluation of their own potential and the world around them,” says Fitzgerald. Sponsorship for DLectricity was provided by TLS Productions, Inc., XL Video, and Troy Design & Manufacturing Co.
“Overall, it was an absolutely amazing experience for TLS Productions, but the greatest reward of all was being able to be part of an event celebrating the artistry and resiliency that exists within the City of Detroit,” adds Kedzierski.