With Autumn comes the 70th year of the Falling Leaf Festival in Tumut and Bioluminescence was invited to come along and light up the centre of town in the Connection Centre and ten local young people signed up to be a part of it!

Hello Tumut! Bioluminescence has arrived for the @fallingleaffestivaltumut and we have had day one of our workshop. The weather is amazing, so after a quick digital camera primer and some tips on how to get better video the crew headed down to the park and the river to start our content creation. The falling leaves made for some spectacular video opportunities from slow-motion leaves falling in the breeze to the leaves floating down the river. Colours everywhere! We even sampled the sounds of the leaves crunching as we walked over them for the soundscape we will create for Friday night. The workshop location is in the heritage Brooklyn on Fitzroy in the dining lounge – luxury!!! We even got a mention in the local paper! Bring on day two!

Day two at @fallingleaffestivaltumut kicked off with some projector tests over breakfast before heading to Brooklyn on Fitzroy for the day two workshop to learn about @resolume, MIDI controllers and how we can use all of the 78 video clips they made the previous day to build the show for Friday night. Then we jumped into the projection mapping process learning about projectors, throw distances, lumens and all of the cables needed to bring it together. We set up two @heavym_software stations and did some mapping practice while others created soundscapes using Samplr and audio field recordings. A quick bit of dinner before heading to site and starting the install. We managed to get all of the projectors installed, the mapping done and we were ready for the performance!

Day three at the @fallingleaffestivaltumut was show night! Starting with a crew dinner, a quick crew photo and then a whole bunch of running around to set up lights, get the tech ready at our two operations stations and then hiding the bluetooth speakers around the site and then checking to make sure the mapping from the previous night was still where it was meant to be, we were busy! As the sun went down and the gates opened everyone took their places and we delivered almost three hours of constantly morphing sound and vision across the amazing architecture of the Connection Centre in Tumut. Then the crowds came! There were plenty of sights and sounds for the audience to experience including @isaacliehne and his wrist mounted projector, the Beyard, the video microscope to look at things we found along the river and live sampling of people talking to add to the abstract soundscape filling the space. The ten young people rocked that space and blew minds with what they created and shared. Thank you to the @fallingleaffestivaltumut committee for hosting us, the people of Tumut for making us feel so welcome and the young people who gave up a few days of their holidays to be a part of Bioluminescence! 

Sculpture Bermagui invited Bioluminescence to be a part of their Twilight Picnic event on Saturday 16 March 2024 in Bermagui. We put out a call and ten young people answered from across the Eurobodalla and Bega Valley Shires.

Day one of Bioluminescence at @sculpturebermagui kicked off with ten young people from across the Bega Valley coming along to create something special for the Twilight Picnic on Saturday night. We headed out to the Horseshoe Bay beach and headland to see what wonders of nature we could video. One of those surprises was a solo Fairy Penguin! We used iPads, underwater cameras and digital SLR\’s to capture the beautiful environment plus some of the amazing sculptures! Then it was back to @begavalleyshirelibrary in Bermagui to their new maker space to edit the footage and start building the content for our live show. Today is going to see us learn the tools and techniques of video projection mapping and then setting up for the big show on Saturday! 

Day two of Bioluminescence at @sculpturebermagui started with a bit more content creation using @lumafusion.codm before learning the video projection mapping tools and techniques. We looked at @heavym_software and then using Syphon to pipe @resolume_ in and controlling it with an APC40 MKII via MIDI. After a feed of pizza from Bermagui Pizza we moved to Dickinson Park to start projection mapping for the big show Saturday!

Day three – Showtime! Another feed of pizza from Bermagui Pizza, installing the last bits of equipment, putting out lights and the laptops and the people started turning up. The worst bit for us is the final hour before sunset. We are ready to go but there is nothing to do after we\’ve checked everything for third time! Finally the lanterns were turned on and the projectors fired up. We lit up the @bermisurfclub and the trees behind it. We have the arm mounted projector The Beyard and a spot for the audience to come up and play with the video microscope. This was team work and co-creation at it\’s best. Each of the team had a go at each of the ops stations and kept the show going. The rain stayed away, the show ended and we packed up. Another awesome Bioluminescence! Thanks @sculpturebermagui for having us! 

We were excited to be invited back to Cobargo Folk Festival for 2024. This time we were back but bigger with more! We started off a week before the festival learning all about DMX and setting up LED lights and programming them using a USB to DMX unit and LightKey software. We learned about addressing lights, using DMX splitters and daisy chaining. We set up our own scenes and sequences while lighting up the Supper Room at the Cobargo School of Arts getting ready for the festival weekend where we would create the Bioluminescence Light Portal.

Day one of the festival saw us exploring Narira Creek at the edge of the festival site capturing frogs, old skulls, water ripples and grass blowing in the wind with our cameras. Once back in the workshop shed we explored video editing using LumaFusion on the iPads. This was developing the content for the Saturday night performance.

Day 2 saw us transfer all of the clips – we had collectively made over 80 of them! Discussions were had on file formats, CODEC’s and file management. This got us ready for going through the video projection process. Shutting the roller door in the shed to darken it as much as possible we pointed a couple of projectors in there and used Heavy M to trace parts of the shed and start to learn how content is managed.

At the end of Day 2 we headed down to the main arena to set up the lighting installation and projection map the main music tent a 30m X 20m behemoth! We tested all the equipment and established two operational stations on each side of the portal which would end up being the main entrance on to the arena. We used the inbuilt grid test pattern to line up the two projectors and define the overlap to be able to edge blend them in HeavyM. One that was done we made out decisions on how to map the structure.

Then Day 3 was performance night! We lit the place up with our content on the roof of the main tent, with the magic of the wrist mounted projector Beyard and the twin lighting towers making the Bioluminescence Portal!

Bioluminescence @ Cobargo Folk Festival 2024 was proudly supported by the Yuin Folk Club, the Cobargo Community Access Centre, the Triangle Tool Library and the community of Cobargo.