2024

Bioluminescence was invited to be a part of an event called “A Night at the Museum” at the amazing Griffith Pioneer Park Museum.

We landed at the Griffith Pioneer Park Museum and kicked off with a ripper day building our content for Saturday night. With our task to make the ordinary extraordinary we set about exploring the super extraordinary Pioneer Park with not only an abundance of amazing Riverina bio-diversity but with the added bonus of astounding historical items, buildings and machinery! It wasn\’t hard to capture unique videos! We edited in the Lumafusion app and made a bunch of clips. Next we learned GoVJ and tested out NDI streaming our GoVJ apps to the laptop and then to the projector. The day ended with a quick projector test on Myall Park Hall and the old Griffith Hospital buildings.

Whoa! What an awesome second day! Started by sampling sounds from around the museum including the sound of typewriters for our audio soundscapes and then it was straight into learning about projectors, the projection mapping process and having a go using HeavyM to map corners of the workshop space. Then it was setting up outside, talking safety, securing leads and trip hazards before getting stuck into projection mapping the two buildings. There was also time to have some practice with the @eye_candy_portals Beyard before the rain started and we had to pack up. But we are ready for the show!

That was just the best!! We are always in awe of the way young people jump in with both feet and step up when given the opportunity! These amazing eight young people absolutely smashed it and put on a show that had the audience engaged and enthralled with wonderful moments of participation when the audience became a part of the immersive audiovisual environment this crew built. Bioluminescence is always placed based and site specific and to see the @griffithpioneerparkmuseum transformed by these young creatives was a privilege! The photos and video gives you an idea of the energy and fun had tonight! Thanks to @eye_candy_portals and the other four artists who lit up other areas of the park and to Jason @bassling Richardson who invited us to Griffith along with the support of @westernriverinaarts. Bioluminescence is supported by the NSW Government through @creatensw

The Bioluminescence Project was invited to be a part of the Trail of Light and Sound in Tabulam put on by RealArtWorks.

Workshop day one started with a full group of 11 young people from Tabulam and surrounds. One young person even travelled two hours to get here! Kicking off we looked at how to get better videos using composition techniques like the rule of thirds and turning on the grid on the cameras plus some tech speak about resolutions and frame rates – everyone loves slo-mo! Then we went to the banks of the mighty Clarence to capture the local environment and to maybe see somethings we\’ve only walked past without noticing. Small flowers, lichen on an old log and the patterns made of dried mud on a track. After lunch we jumped into Lumafusion and edited what we shot. By the end of day one they had created over 70 short clips of their own content ready for the show on Saturday night! Bring on day two!! As always a big thanks to @eye_candy_portals for the boundless enthusiasm, endless experiments and taking a thousand pics every day! More behind the scenes stuff over on his Insta! 

Day two! It\’s always good when the young people come back, that means day one was fun! They air-dropped over 90 clips of content that they had made the day before so we jumped straight into video projection mapping. Because we are inside the hall and we could make it dark it was straight into mapping the space. Mapping takes team work! So with a guide close to the surface being mapped helping the computer operator. Lots of \”the top left point nudge right up down\” They rocked this and by dinner the hall was mapped! After pizza and chips (healthy food choices!!) it was adding our content and testing the smoke machine. We were ready for the big event!

Day Three – Showtime!! A final briefing over a dinner of pizza, talking safety, being good hosts and roles and responsibilities once the Bioluminescence Crew hi-vis shirts were on were all discussed. A final rehearsal and tech check, smoke machine on, a run down of how to use @eye_candy_portals arm mounted projector – The Beyard – and we were ready to go! We had our Ops Stations all set up including the ever popular video microscope and bugs, a live video feedback set up plus the two computers triggering the 90+ clips that were made and controlling the Totem and projection maps around the Tabulam Hall. And suddenly the crowd was on us filling the immersive audio-visual installation we had co-created in three days! Lots of questions, lots of awe, lots of questions and plenty of smiles and laughter as the residents of Tabulam saw their hall in a different light, completely transformed by their young people! What a blast! Thank you Tabulam and thank you #RealArtWorks for the invitation! 

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.