Aliot-LookingOutwards02

Project page on Naimark’s website

This project, called Displacements, is something I was introduced to a few years ago in Larry Shea’s Media Performance class here at CMU. I wasn’t initially enamored by it, admittedly, but as time has gone on, I find myself thinking about this piece quite often. I think it struck a chord with me in the following months and years because it was such a simple, yet such precisely executed piece.

The installation is completely blank, white room in which a spinning projector projects color and movement onto. Before the room was colored white, actors had been filmed in the room with a camera rotating at the same speed in the same place as the projector, so that they appear in the projection.  Naimark is often referred to as a pioneer of projection mapping and indeed he is; Displacements was installed 1984 in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. (Although there are projection mapping projects such as the faces in Disney’s theme park as early as 1969)

As an artist who is interested in memory and the connection to space and objects, this piece hit each chord while simultaneously being a very open project. Its a step into augmented reality.