David Cotterrell, an installation artist has launched a new exhibition entitled ‘Monsters of the Id.’ Derived from Cotterrell’s journeys to Afghanistan, this new work interprets his experiences through image manipulation, staging, CGI and new projection techniques.
The exhibition immerses the visitor in a landscape that crosses the physical and the virtual. For Searchlight 2, a desert landscape scene, Inition’s 3D scanning team worked with Cotterrell to help capture the uneven terrain using a Mephisto EX 3D scanning system. The Mephisto EX was mounted to a custom rig to record an aerial view of the installation on its wide angle lens.
The 3D data was used by the artist to instruct the 3D projection mapping. The content is projected-down from an edge-blended array of projectors mounted above the false ceiling onto the abstracted dune landscape. The content is generated at runtime by one of a number of networked Unity applications which populates this landscape with a large number of avatars whose path-finding activity is affected by the shape of the landscape mesh.
The final effect reveals illusory human shadows traversing a low platform terrain, suggestive of the desert landscape as seen by an aerial drone. The unnerving movements of this unidentified, disembodied population are computer-generated and directly mirror the actions seen in Observer Effect in Gallery Room 1.
David Cotterrell commented: “Our challenge was to generate a reasonably accurate mesh to use within Unity so that the projected images appear to behave correctly when navigating the physical contoured surface within the gallery. We worked with Inition’s 3D scanning team to capture the varied terrain and import this into Unity. So the engine is calculating path-finding elevations and behaviour based on the unique surface contours of the gallery powder-based ‘landscape’.”
The collection of experimental installations is being staged at the John Hansard Gallery, University of Southampton (www.hansardgallery.org.uk), from the 11th Feb – 31st Mar 2012. For more information about the artist visit: www.davidcotterrell.com.