Installing audio-visual installation at The Word - day 1

On Tuesday between 2:30pm and 4pm Sarah and I had access to the StoryWorld space at The Word in which my forthcoming exhibition will be held. Demand for the room is high, with lots of events and activities happening in there and so it is difficult to get access. Hence why every minute was precious during our 1.5 hour time slot.

I had prepared all the video files so that each one was 'mapped' to the specific wall that it would be projected onto. The walls have some curvature, and so I had to apply a different template to each of the videos that corresponded with the curvature of each wall so that the projection would not spill onto the floor or ceiling. The audio has been synched to correspond with the videos, and the videos have been edited so that not all the walls have projections on at the same time, but footage appears intermittently on all of the walls, adding a surprise element and creating an immersive environment.

Playing the footage for the first time alerted us to the very high bass levels of the speakers. Unfortunately the speakers are concealed within a wall and so we were told that it was not possible to access them to  turn down the bass. This resulted in some of the higher, and more subtle sounds becoming lost. The audio would need to be edited again to allow for the high bass speakers. Later that night Sarah and I created some alternative versions of the footage to be tested when next in the space.

I was disappointed with how the projections did not appear very strong and the colours were not as vibrant as I had intended. I realised that the window blinds had large gaps around the rim of the windows and so light was still entering the room. Simply taping over these gaps should help reduce the light entering the space.



I was also conscious that the videos were not properly aligned with the walls, and they were not all at the same level. In order to rectify this, we needed to manually change the position of the projectors. With lots of fine tweaking, we managed to get all of the videos to align.