Surfing the Learning Curve
Reflecting on the challenges of my projection for Monticello Glow Fest and updates on The Emotional Shift Project.
We’re now 64 days into 2025. In some instances it feels like it’s already March, but in most of them, it feels like it’s only March.
Before I jump in, let’s pause to breathe for a few seconds. Congratulations for making it through February!
MONTICELLO GLOW FEST
Almost two weeks ago, I participated in Monticello Glow Fest, a small community festival about 45 minutes north of me. I had never heard of it until an acquaintance of mine saw this snowflake projection on Facebook last March and told me they were the event director. They said there had been a projection mapping display at the 2024 event and if I was interested, they’d like to include me in 2025. Though I was still very new to projection mapping, with that snowflake being only my second attempt, I figured I had a year to improve and said yes.
When we began planning in January, I was told that the city had installed several bright lights around the perimeter of the park, so there was a limited number of spots that would work well. We decided on a wall on the side of a small warming house, seen in the photo below.
To project onto the entire wall, I had to be at least 20 feet back. However, a small picnic area with a grill and concrete post obstructed the light beam. (You can see them both in the video below.) The only options were to elevate the projector on a picnic table or position it off to the side and skew the artwork.
About a month before the event, I tested the picnic table setup and it worked well, so I thought everything was set. However, in the following days we got more snow. During a trip up to get a better reference photo for the artwork, I saw that ice had accumulated on the table, making it a risky option. The safest bet was to set up off to the side.
After the snow, the temps dropped significantly and I became really concerned. My projector and laptop have operating temperatures of 32°F and 50°F, respectively, while the forecast was 15-20°F. Limited cold exposure is okay, but the event is 2 hours long. I didn’t want to take any chances, so with my limited budget I decided to craft a warming shelter using a camping shower pop-up tent and a butane heater.
During my final test visit about a week before the event to see if the shelter would get warm enough, I discovered that because it’s such a small space, moving around inside resulted in me kicking snow all over. Even though my extension cord and outlet adapter is rated for outside, I didn’t want snow near the plugs, so I had another problem to solve. A few days later I remembered that I have an outdoor weatherproof blanket that would work perfectly as a floor. Figuring it was a pretty straightforward solution, I didn’t feel like I needed to take another trip just to test the setup with the blanket.
On the night of the event, I arrived an hour early to set up. Unable to see the wall very well from inside the shelter, I sat at the picnic table to work. The alignment was giving me a lot more trouble than during my test run, and it took the entire hour to get it as close as I could. When I was done, I set my laptop inside the shelter. When I stepped out, the projection was misaligned. I thought maybe the HDMI cable had pulled the projector somehow, so I adjusted the projector stand, carefully grabbed my laptop again, fixed the alignment, and put the laptop back. I stepped out of the shelter and again it was misaligned. I adjusted everything I could think of, repeatedly tightening the projector stand and checking and rechecking the shelter to make sure it wasn’t bumping into anything. I couldn’t figure out what was going on and I spent the entire evening stressing about why it wasn’t aligning as well as it had the week before.
It wasn’t until I got home after the event that I realized the problem was the blanket. The projector stand isn’t very heavy, so by putting a flexible surface between it and the bumpy snow, it wasn’t able to sink down into the snow to stabilize like it did when I was testing. Every time I stepped on the blanket I was causing the stand to wobble just enough to throw off the alignment. Had I put the blanket toward the back of the shelter and kept the stand in the snow, it would’ve been fine. By fixing one small problem I ended up causing a much larger problem.
While I would love to say that the technical issues were my only hurdle, I also had to navigate two personal challenges.
1) The other projection artist’s communication gave me the feeling that they saw the event as a competition despite us having very different styles of work. I nearly backed out during the initial planning when their response to my suggestion that we collaborate on the surface of a bridge at the perimeter of the park was, “The most boring thing you can do with projection mapping is cast an image or texture on a big flat surface.”
2) The day after the event I sent an email thanking the organizers for their hard work and for including me in the event. Afterward I checked Facebook to see if anything had been shared on the event page. A short highlight video had been posted, however my projection had not been included at all, not even in the background of other footage. I thought it would be a bit overbearing to send another email to point out the omission, so I did nothing.
A day later I received a reply to my email saying they had noticed my projection was missing from the video and wanted to apologize. They also said that the video editor had been given footage of it, but speculated that it must’ve been missed due to post-event exhaustion. I don’t doubt that was the case, however it still caused me to feel like my work didn’t stand out enough to be memorable.
Overall it was a pretty rocky experience, but we learn the most when things don’t go smoothly! I’m glad that the effort I’ve made to be kinder to myself has paid off and I spent a lot less time ruminating and beating myself up about it than I would have in the past.
FEBRUARY’S EMOTIONAL SHIFT PROJECT VIDEO
A BRIEF PROJECT UPDATE
When I created this project, I grossly underestimated just how stressful living through this administration was going to be. I’m doing my best to keep moving forward despite how challenging it is, as we all are. After I finished Glow Fest, I took some time to zoom out and get an overview of where I’m at.
What I recognized is that I decided to move forward with the project while I was still in the process of experimenting with the appearance of the mandalas. The first video was great, but took me 3 weeks to create. For the second video I attempted to do something that was similar but faster to create. It didn’t work out, so I went in a different direction. With no clear style, there’s no base to work from which makes every video a complex project. I simply don’t have the energy to do that twice a month, especially alongside other work.
I have no intention of ending the project, but I’ve decided to pause it for March in order to regroup and work on landing on a style.
As always, thank you so much for being here! Remember to take a little time to reflect on the beauty and magic that still exists in the world.
Until the next newsletter, be well!
Giesla
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