Student’s senior project fuses flashlights and audience interaction
"Flashlights will uncover a pattern of animated, distorted glass on a wall of the Broad Art Center.
Credit: @Nate Mohler Using the wall of the main stairwell at the front entrance, Nate Mohler will use three projectors that reveal patterns and animations as the audience interacts with the piece. The fourth-year design media arts student’s project will be a part of the design media arts “Pressed for Space” senior showcase starting Thursday at the Broad Art Center. Inspired by the classes he’s taken on projections and their increasing use in Los Angeles, Mohler said he aims to urge people to recognize projections as an art form.
“My personal draw to projection as art is how much of a delicate experience it is,” Mohler said. “Projection art is temporary in nature, and at some point the light must go out and the building or object will go back to being itself.”
Mohler’s first projection for a school project featured student-submitted quotes on mental health and allowed people to spray-paint a wall with virtual-reality technology. Two USC students then utilized his VR spray-painting concept and projected their work onto a building. Mohler said their success led him to make his own large-scale version to project at UCLA, focusing on projections as art forms rather than just for commercial purposes.
“(The USC exhibit) paved the way, but I said I can totally do this and better – something more meaningful and something more conceptual,” Mohler said.
Mohler’s projections will utilize the entire staircase wall at the front entrance of the Broad. Participants can use 3D-printed flashlights – whose movements are tracked by VR technology – in order to reveal hidden patterns that will be projected onto the wall. Mohler coded each pattern, some of which simply augment the wall with 3D grooves and cracks, while other patterns include animated, distorted glass."— Ethan Pak, Jun. 5, 2019
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Daily Bruin website.
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