Forward Progress
I'm pivoting my project focus from online content to real-world projection mapping.
Welcome to April!
For some reason, everything was very glitchy with this newsletter. Some people received it twice, and some people (you!) didn’t receive it at all. I was able to figure out who was omitted so you wouldn’t miss out! Looks like I’ll need to find a new newsletter service soon.
We made it to the end of the week! Let’s take a second to take a deep breath.
To quickly recap, last month I decided to pause the Emotional Shift Project because I believed that not having a specific style for my mandala animations was causing problems. With no set style as a reference point to work from, there was no continuity to what I was creating.
Not long after I made that decision, my creative coach suggested that I come up with a few small projects to practice projection mapping. I started playing and experimenting with different things and was having a great time. I made matboard and foamcore models of mandalas to project on. Then it dawned on me:
The real problem with the Emotional Shift Project was that I built it around making YouTube videos and writing essays instead of the thing that I want to be doing most: projection mapping.
This is the third time in a little more than year that I’ve tried writing and creating videos and ended up stuck, so I wanted to dig into why I keep repeating this pattern.
I landed on two reasons: the comparison trap and fear.
The Comparison Trap
“Everyone” has a Substack, “everyone” has a YouTube channel, this is how “everyone” builds an audience and finds success. If they can do it, so can I!
However, writing and content creation are each full time jobs. Every time I start, I end up fizzling out because of how much work it is for one person who is doing it alone without the support of a second income and help with daily tasks. Time passes and I forget that, thinking the reason I quit was because I didn’t manage my time as well as “everyone else” does and I could totally do it all if I just scheduled the work better.
Fear
YouTube and writing are pretty straightforward—you make a video or write an essay and then promote them to your audience. To build your audience you’re relying on people sharing your work with others and for an algorithm to push people towards the thing that you make. You have some control over it, but not a lot.
With projection mapping, the audience that sees your work when it’s complete is not the audience who buys it. You have to make a pitch to an event planner or marketing team and convince them that your work will be a good fit for their event or help them market their product. There’s no algorithm involved. My success will mostly rely on my ability to sell my skills and getting connected with people. This is absolutely terrifying for me, so I’ve been mostly hiding behind creating things that can only be viewed online.
While watching a show on Netflix, another problem occurred to me that I hadn’t previously considered. A father was grappling with his son potentially being a murderer and he went through a range of emotions within the span of a few minutes.
Emotions aren’t cut and dry. I was asking people to come to the YouTube videos with one specific emotion that they wanted to shift and most emotions just don’t work that way.
Many emotions are felt in tandem, like anger and despair. Aside from that, sometimes we can’t name specifically what we’re feeling without some reflection, and that’s really difficult to incorporate into a 3 minute YouTube video.
HOW I’M MOVING FORWARD WITH THE PROJECT
Bringing the mandalas and somatic exercises outdoors/in person
It is way too easy for our attention to get hijacked on any social media platform, even YouTube. I believe bringing this project into the “real world” will give people a better chance to tap in more to what they’re feeling and potentially spend some time with it, rather than watching a video and then scrolling on to the next thing.
Additionally, it brings me out into the “real world.” The only way I’m going to get better at talking about my work and doing projections with an audience is by practice.
The rough idea is to build a mandala arch that I will project animations onto. When you visit the arch, if you want to participate with the project there will be a list of somatic exercises and you can choose which feels right. After your exercise you can sit and enjoy the mandala projection. If participation isn’t your thing, there’s no pressure to do any exercises. You can sit and watch the animation or take photos inside the arch.
Discontinuing the YouTube videos
There may be a time in the future when it works for me to revisit making mandala content for YouTube, but right now I can’t put my attention on both creating work for the internet and work that’s meant to be viewed in person. My original intent was to adapt the YouTube videos so they could be projected, but that’s still putting my main focus on YouTube instead of projection mapping and that’s not what I need to be doing.
WHAT I’M WORKING ON NOW
I’m currently working on the logistics of building the arch. I started with a foam core prototype (seen below) just to practice projection mapping on a complex shape. The proportions are way off for scaling it up to life-size, so this is just a test for practice.
Click to watch the practice projection and a behind the scenes look at my shopping trip to buy building supplies for a working scale model!
If you saw the shopping video on Instagram, this is the full version with my receipt summary at the end! I had to edit that out to meet the 3 minute time limit.
HOW YOU CAN FOLLOW ALONG
Right now I have a very disjointed way of sharing the progress of what I’m working on. I mostly post to Instagram stories because it’s really easy to do, but I also have accounts on Facebook, TikTok, Bluesky, and YouTube. I post different things to each based on how much I use them or what they allow for content (like video length, character limits, addition of links, etc.).
For this project (and potentially beyond) I’m going to be consolidating everything to my website so you don’t need to have an account on a specific social media platform or wait for this newsletter each month in order to follow along.
Look for another newsletter this month with more details!
HOW YOU CAN HELP
Because I want this project to be accessible to everyone, it will be donation-based. I’ve created an open-ended GoFundMe for people to contribute to at any time, as many times as they’d like. I’m required to set a goal but there isn’t a particular amount I’m aiming for. Everything helps! All of the specifics about how the donations will be used are listed in the description. Click below to check it out!
I’m really glad that I took the time to pause and reorient the project. I’m so excited to move forward!
Until the next newsletter, be well!
Giesla