The video projection took place at the firm’s headquarters in Diespeker Wharf neighborhood in London’s Islington district. Situated along the banks of the Regent Canal, the former Victorian timber mill is a listed building, restored and converted into a contemporary workspace. As such, it has become emblematic of the firm’s architectural preservation efforts.
While it isn’t unusual for the surfaces that serve as a projection canvas to be unevenly shaped with multiple focal planes, Diespeker Wharf was 3D in the extreme. The closest surface was about 20 meters away from the projections. The farthest was about 40 meters away. The projection itself was about 16 meters wide.
The brief for the Diespeker show content was to celebrate the history of the area, spanning a time frame from AD 43, when Roman camps were established, through the Victorian era and the 20th century all the way up to the present time. PTEa’s Carl Vann said the firm had been impressed with Ashton’s prior projections on the Shell Building on London’s South Bank during New Year’s Eve festivities.
After PTEa signed off Ashton’s storyboards, the projection artist worked with Paul Mumford to produce all the artwork for the show over a two-week timeframe. As usual, the artwork was “placed” using reference points taken from a photo survey. The video footage was then stored in a Green Hippo Hippotizer media server, which was used to do all the necessary keystoning, masking and other corrections required to match the camera lens to that of the projector, and the precision mapping of the images onto the building.
Ashton specified a .8 lens for the single Christie Roadster projector, and he was impressed with both the brightness of the machine and how the lens handled focusing on all the surfaces, achieving sharp reproduction of the imagery throughout.
QED provided the hardware for both projection and audio. Richard Porter engineered the projection and control system. Sound artist Karen Monid was commissioned to create a custom soundscape to accompany the visuals.
“This was a really nice project,” Ashton said. “Everyone at PTEa was very enthusiastic and a real pleasure to work with. Being architects, they also had a great perspective on the form and impact of what could be achieved with projected art.”
Vann commended Ashton on the projection and Monid on the sound track. “Ross and his team provided an excellent and highly professional service throughout,” he noted.
For more information, please visit www.projection.co.uk.
