I went to the Luma Festival in Binghamton with a friend. This is the first time I heard of it but the event started in 2015. Luma involves projecting videos onto buildings, all of which seem to have some faux Roman Ionic columns (the ones with the curly scrolls). The videos are designed to be work with (or against, in a deconstructive sort of what) the physical structure of a building, including the windows and columns and stuff. Some of the videos are kind of pretentious or overly obscure. Some are pretty cool. The sound on one was painfully too loud. There was also one installation we went to that required tickets (almost everything is free). There were other things we skipped, like some talks, a silent disco and pitch black meal (both seem very unappealing). But overall it was quite cool. There were tons and tons and tons of people. Moving through the crowd reminded me of Bugs Bunny getting to his set in a movie theater in Hare Do. We basically had to plow our way through and make a gap. Here are some photo highlights from some of the exhibits. September 7th, 2019. 000-DSC_3868-header: Phased Rain 000-DSC_3868-headertext:
This was created by a group of Barcelona-based
artists and was in the bottom of a parking garage. It consisted of a
bunch of linear light fixtures that started white and eventually changed
to red, some round white lights on the floor that cast shadows of people
on the wall, a few spotlights to that shined on this large, tin-foil
covered rectangular block. As the lights pulsed, they'd make a musical
simulation of a dripping sort of noise (kind of a brief descending arpeggio),
and various ones would all be going out of sync. At the end, they all
sync up, in phase with each other, forming a kind of alarm sound and
the lights all turn red. Spotlights move and shine on the tin-foil block.
And the music plays some low, rumbly sounds that was reminiscent of
"Echoes" from Pink Floyd's Meddle Album. The bass was loud and
carried quite a way, sounding loud while we were waiting to enter the area.
According to the online description, this is making a statement about
how global warming is bad.
It was quite cool and neat, but I must admit I didn't really get or
understand the message and don't know what the tin foil block represents.
Recycling? Lack of recycling? What the earth will turn into?
Bizarro-world?
000-DSC_3868: Waiting to enter the lower ramp...of doom!
001-DSC_3869: We could only wonder what the structure-shaking rumblings
of bass notes represented. what visions and art was beyond and below
the curve into the bottom of the parking ramp.
002-DSC_3871: Our guide wore cool glow-in-the-dark stuff and was happy
to model it for me.
003-DSC_3872: Entering the art space...of doom!
004-DSC_3876: It's quite dark.
005-DSC_3883: But then there are occasional pulses of light.
006-DSC_3884: People could wandering around the space and explore ... sometimes
with light...
007-DSC_3885: And sometimes in darkness...
008-DSC_3886: Some lights cast shadows of people on the walls.
009-DSC_3887: I liked how the wall-shadows looked.
010-DSC_3888: Some flickering lights from the computers controlling the lights
and sounds.
011-DSC_3890: And then there's the strange tin-foil covered block.
012-DSC_3892: The lights pulse in different sections of the garage.
013-DSC_3893: And then they change colors from white to
red ... of doom!
014-DSC_3894: The search lights start seeking the tin-foil bock.
015-DSC_3895: Darkness except for the searchlights.
016-DSC_3896: Redness
except for the searchlights.
017-DSC_3897: The girl reached for the light, but her dad made her stop
just before this. Damn...it looked cool.
018-DSC_3898: More lights...
019-DSC_3899: Fewer lights...
020-DSC_3901-header: One Giant Leap
020-DSC_3901-headertext:
This one was weird. It started off with a space shuttle-ish rocket launch, with the building looking like a launch structure, and then kind of had some space stuff and other disconnected things that were hard to follow. Also, the movement of people looked awkward and unnatural. I wasn't really sure where this was going with stuff or what it was really about. But some of the visuals looked nice. 020-DSC_3901: People at Luma watching a One Giant Leap. 021-DSC_3902: A nearby building with a colorfully lit top floor. 022-DSC_3903: A nearby building showing Mural Mapping. 023-DSC_3904: The projectors ... they're pretty beefy. 024-DSC_3905: The building becomes a launch support tower. 025-DSC_3906: The rocket/shuttle launches, complete with a flashing alarm on top of the building. 026-DSC_3907: The rocket/shuttle starts to climb. 027-DSC_3908: People watch the launch. I like their expressions. 028-DSC_3910: The end of the video. Favorite color made it; I thought that was the title. 029-DSC_3912-header: Mural Mapping, Arts and Crafts, and more 029-DSC_3912-headertext:
Mural Mapping is a project where local artists can create virtual murals
to be projected on this building. The artists don't need to deal with
the details of the mapping or projection. They are given a template with
an outline of the building and they can create a digital image or traditional
one that will be digitized and projected. It's a cool way to include
a variety of artists and styles. Of course I only found all this out
a day later when I was looking up information about this exhibit.
There were also people selling art in stalls on one street. (Plus a row
of trailers selling various carnival food, all in "the key of fried.")
One artist had lights in bottles. I thought they looked cool. I asked
if she minded me taking pictures and she said go right ahead.
The last one is based on the clichéd improperly phrased version of
"All your bases are ours" (from some old video game that poorly
translated their phrases into English). The upshot is that it's
video games like Pong displayed on a building. I watched it for about
20 seconds before getting bored and moving on.
029-DSC_3912: Tropical theme mural.
030-DSC_3913: Moldy, abandoned look to the building.
031-DSC_3914: Lighted bottles for sale.
032-DSC_3916: Cool colors in the arrangement of bottles, including cow spots
I just noticed.
033-DSC_3917: The credits after a came of pong on a building.
034-DSC_3920-header: Pandora's Box
034-DSC_3920-headertext:
This one was an interesting visual one that seemed to be mostly about cool images and not much else. But that worked pretty well. The building started out as Pandora's Box and became a variety of things. In the end it started warping into itself, sort of like the house at the end of Poltergeist. It made good use of the structure of the building. The projections at Luma use three banks of projectors. The main central ones, and then two on either side, so everything is covered. The sides of the columns all get the same look. It works quite well. 034-DSC_3920: The crowd waiting for the video to begin while the projectors display a countdown. Mapping is visible in a building in the distance. 035-DSC_3922: Six projectors cover the front side, plus one projector for the right side of the building. The crowd is anticipating the start ... except for those busy watching their phones. 036-DSC_3925: The lion is part of the canvas. It's clear that both right and left edges are equally illuminated by the side projectors. 037-DSC_3926: It wasn't until a later video that I realized this volume meter was counting down the last 10 seconds before each video began (while advertising a stereo component). These are not matched to each building,so the text is distorted by the building's contours. 038-DSC_3928: The title slide for Pandora's Box. 039-DSC_3929: A cool texture map turning the building to sand. 040-DSC_3930: And a Tron-like line graphic of the building. 041-DSC_3932: A more elaborate design. Notice how all the lines are straight regardless of whether they're projected into recessed areas or not. 042-DSC_3933: The building turns into a sort of ancient Greek temple or maybe a pyramid-like thing. The columns start doing funky swaying. Again note how straight everything is regardless of whether it's on a column or not, and many cross through columns. 043-DSC_3934: Hey, we're underwater now! 044-DSC_3935: And a school of fish swims by, passing through the columns into the building. 045-DSC_3936: Then a hell-mouth or black hole opens up, consuming all. It might be part of the bad stuff in Pandora's Box, though the earlier stuff doesn't really seem to qualify. 046-DSC_3937: The building starts to get pixelated (or tiled or voxelated?) in a sort of Xoas Computing/Lawnmower Man kind of way. 047-DSC_3938: The building starts warping into itself. 048-DSC_3939: It briefly reforms before getting sucked back into itself. The end (huh?). 049-DSC_3940-header: The Awakening 049-DSC_3940-headertext:
This one had some interesting bits, but was also kind of a jumble of stuff. I thought some of the animation, especially of the female dancers, looked smooth and realistic. Perhaps they used some kind of motion capture technology to guide that. So according to the description, it's about how ambition, while good for success, is a double-edged sword and cuts people off from what is truly needed, which is the natural world. And something about how turning inward and meditating is good. It felt a bit pretentious, and also the messages were unclear. While there were evil factories that were springing up, the spirit of the earth that appears in the background seems to be a corrupting force of evil, sort of like Satan trying to tempt people, but in the end it's just "mother earth" who destroys everything. Which kind of seems evil, so I don't quite get it. Also, the sound was way too loud. At points I had to keep my ears covered, especially towards the end when everything was getting more frenetic and even louder. That was a bit distracting. 049-DSC_3940: The building with the colorful top floor (again). 050-DSC_3943: The title slide for The Awakening. 051-DSC_3945: A guy sits atop the building meditating. Evil spirits emerge from him. 052-DSC_3946: Some demonic force of nature taunts and attacks him. 053-DSC_3947: He causes evil factories to spring up, sort of the art from the cover of Pink Floyd's album Animals. He also is wearing some primitive demon-animal mask. 054-DSC_3948: The evil demon spirit watches the poisonous factories grow, with interest. 055-DSC_3949: Odd silver metallic women-things dance with the man who may or may not be into it or being coerced. 056-DSC_3950: The women-thing creatures continue to dance as the world becomes some cacophonous modern hell. 057-DSC_3951: The man or some reindeer-man-thing is caught in a burning beehive-brain and dragged around and through the dark abyss. 058-DSC_3952: The evil overlord demon spirit appears again, watching it all. Also, you find out it has boobs so it's a female evil overlord demon spirit with burning yellow eyes of hate. 059-DSC_3953: The world is sucked into the museum or whatever it is and barriers are erected blocking the world out. People come by and bang on the invisible barriers but can't help or are trapped outside. Sort of like The Wall ("It's not easy banging your heart against against some mad bugger's wall"). 060-DSC_3954: Finally, all is black and nothingness, as the overlord demon of darkness reveals it was her controlling everything all the time, as her wrath and hatred consumes all. 061-DSC_3956: Oh wait...the frowning mouth of hate is the earth. The she-demon of destruction was the earth all this time. So...don't fuck with her maybe? 062-DSC_3957-header: Data Nova 062-DSC_3957-headertext:
This one was more abstract and seemed like it was just cool images without a plot, so that was OK. The description says it's using data visualization with New York State star charts. I don't know what that sentence means, nor did I know NYS has its own star charts. Also, it says it explores the concept that the universe is guided by an unseen algorithm. Really, if there was a story there, it was kind of lost on me. 062-DSC_3957: The title screen for Data Nova. 063-DSC_3958: The library building starts to become a wireframe digitized image. 064-DSC_3959: The Ionic Columns start to become wireframe images. 065-DSC_3960: The digitization continues. 066-DSC_3961: And then everything starts to get destroyed. 067-DSC_3963: Then it blows the fuck up. 068-DSC_3964: It's back again. Notice the subtle wireframe effect on the columns. 069-DSC_3965: Then the drugs kick in pretty hard. The building is warped, transformed, twisted, shattered, and transformed, all at once. 070-DSC_3966: It becomes exploding points. 071-DSC_3967: It's back, maybe from a wireframe backup, with distorted and damaged sides. 072-DSC_3968: The temple front part remains, the rest is squiggle-city. 073-DSC_3969: More flowing lines of madness. 074-DSC_3971: And now the building is back with ... uh ... giant sperm? 075-DSC_3972: The sperm swarm and school. Didn't think they were sperm till now. 076-DSC_3973: More wireframe backup and damaged and distorted beads. 077-DSC_3975: And explosions of drug-induced colors! 078-DSC_3976: Circuits, maybe slightly spermy? 079-DSC_3977: Connections and material accretion accumulates. 080-DSC_3978: Now it's ... uh ... blue time-space warps. 081-DSC_3979: And more crazy warping stuff. The end! But ... but ... 082-DSC_3980: The top floor of a TV/radio station building had a pixelated digital dragon.