Light Attack → 2004

While driving through the urban spaces of Los Angeles, Florence, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Mexico City, an animated virtual character is projected onto the cityscape of reacting to the architecture and passers-by.

The piece wishes to illuminate the condition of the public sphere in contemporary urban spaces and investigates strategies of expression, communication and distribution. Light Attack elaborates the concept of the 'moving moving' image - the projected moving imagery corresponds to the movement through the space while the character's behavior is influenced by the urban context and passers-by. The piece suggests projection as an emergent ubiquitous medium, raising questions about property and privacy. How public is public space? How do authorities deal with this question? How is projection, as a ubiquitous medium, changing the environment in which we live? In its first version, premiered in Los Angeles in 2004, Light Attack's focused on the ambiguous nature of the city, such as logics of place, neighborhood, environment, landscape and social context in the stereotyped neighborhoods of Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Downtown, Watts, and Compton. In 2005 in the iconic architecture of Florence, Italy, the virtual character revealed and absorbed a radically different urban context through its own beam of light, engaging passers-by and architecture in a visual dialogue. Light Attack uses a custom mobile projection setup installed in a car to project an animated virtual character onto the cityscape. The setup includes a computer laptop, velocity sensor, power supply, projector, and a video camera to document the piece. The car's movement through the city determines the virtual character's behavior and motion patterns, synchronized by a velocity sensor attached to the car wheel and custom computer software. While the projection 'scans' over the buildings' facades, the virtual character interacts with the passers-by and the buildings' structure. Short pre-recorded video loops are arranged into seamless motion patterns by the computer software, allowing interaction with the architecture and passers-by in real-time. The imagery captured by the video camera combined with the velocity information from the public performance is used to create a gallery installation including a panoramic projection and a photographic sculpture.


Awards

''Nabi Special Honorary Mention'' for Unesco Digital Arts Award 2005 - City and Creative Media;
Adjudicators' Recommendation in the category Interactive Art, 8th Japan Media Arts Festival, 2004;
The AIM (Art In Motion 6) Award 2005;
Bernay Kurland Grayson Award for Creative Excellence, 2005.

Exhibitions

11/08
Glow: Forum of Light in Art and Architecture, Eindhoven, the Netherlands, Light Attack

10/07
First International Meeting on Graphic Expression and Design, Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, Mexico City

12/06
Connected: Art Center Nabi and ResFest Korea, Seoul, Korea.

11/06
Microwave International Media Arts Festival, Hong Kong, China 08/06
SIGGRAPH 2006
The 33rd International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, Boston, USA.

12/05
Beyond Media 05: Script, 8th International Festival of Architecture and Media, at the Ospedale degli Innocenti and Stazione Leopolda, Florence, Italy.

02/05
8th Japan Media Art Festival 2004, Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo, Japan.

02/05
AIM VI, the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena.

06/04
New Wight Gallery, UCLA, Los Angeles



Credits

Projected Character
Earl Minor

Support
Christian Moeller
Erkki Huhtamo
Benjamin Bratton
Norman Klein
Joachim Sauter

Production Assistance

Los Angeles, 2004
Jiacong (Jay) Yan
Adriana de Souza e Silva
Dolores Rivera
Zehao Chang
Ted Chung
Silvia Rigon
Andrew Hieronymi
Ashok Sukumaran
Lucas Kuzma
Guthrie Lonergan
Mylinh Nguyen
Kelly Chen
Greg Shin

Florence, 2005 (curated by Marco Brizzi)
Lucilla Zanolari
Franco Filippini
Fiammetta Barsanti
Deaiana Lombardi
Marina Alessandrini
Romina Bettega

Boston, 2006 (curated by Bonnie Mitchell):
George Fifield
Santi Vitayaudom
Helen-Nicole G. Kostis

Hong Kong, 2006 (curated by Nicole Wong)
Joel Kwong
Queenie W.
Keith Lam
Oliver HumiHiro
sponsored by the Goethe Institute Hong Kong (Michael M�ller-Verweyen, Alice Ho)

Seoul, 2006 (curated by Suhjung Hur)
Yoona Lee
Sunghoon Kim

Mexico City, 2007 (curated by Fausto E. Rodriguez)
Susana Barbera
Elisa Garay

Eindhoven, 2008 (curated by Bettina Pelz and Tom Groll)
Michiel ten Caten
Robbert ten Caten
sponsored by City Dyanmiek Eindhoven

Ljubljana, 2011 (curated by Katerina Mirović)
Katerina Mirović
Damjan Kocjančič

Gallery installation (min. space requirements 20 x 22 feet)

Panoramic Projection:

2 x data projectors (XGA, 2000 Lumen ++, incl. VGA extensions), platforms for overhead mount suspended from the ceiling
1 Apple G5 tower dual processor, min. 512 MB RAM, Graphics Card with 256 MB Video Ram. Software: Customized Max Patch; Max MSP 4.3.2 (only Runime activated); Jitter 1.1.4 for OSX; (originally SoftVNS 2.1.7), now SoftVNS 2.1.9

Documentation Video:
1 DVD player
1 Video monitor (15" - 17")
1 pedestal for video monitor

Photographic Sculpture:
Custom suspension grid for panoramic photo-sculpture (total weight approximately 10 pounds)
Download gallery layout (pdf, 173KB) photo-sculpture
Dimensions shipping box for sculpture: 126" x 6" x 12"

Public Performance, Mobile Projection

1 projector (XGA, 5000++ Lumen) or 2 identical projectors (XGA, 3500 - 5000 Lumen)
1 Apple Powerbook G4 800 Mhz ++
1 UPS Battery sysem or high voltage alternator and power converter 12 to 110 Volt (2000 - 3000 Watts)
1 magnet sensor + audio converter (attached at a car wheel)
1 miniDV camera (3 CCD)
1 GPS [Garmin eTrex legend]

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