Jade is thinking
The Wall is a projection mapping video piece as a metaphor of the Great Firewall of China. In July 2017, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced that all VPN services would need to obtain government approval, as part of a “cleanup” of unauthorized internet connections.
In order to protest against China's internet censorship, we created the illusion using projection mapping and motion capture that people were trapped inside an invisible wall.
Tech: Motion capture (OptiTrack MoCap suits), Unreal engine, Video editing (Premiere)
Team: Luqian Chen
My role: Creative technologist, video editing
This piece was exhibited at the Canvas for Public Discourse Show, videos were projected on the facade of up to three buildings along the High Line. The show can be viewed from the Highline between West 20th and 21st streets or street level, from 7 pm to 8:30 pm, Jan 11 2018.
We used OptiTrack motion capture system to record the performers' movements, then cleaned and exported the data into separate takes using Motion Builder for further development.
The Mocap data was applied in Unreal to build the environment, where the characters inside gradually built up their emotions and took actions.
Combined with projection mapping, we created the illusion that the characters are blocked inside an invisible wall. The whole video piece is comprised of several news footage and our virtual scenes, connected and separated by a sentence from John F. Kennedy's speech Ich bin ein Berliner (I am a 'Berliner').
