Mimicry vs. Darwin

As illustrated before, the Mantis is an expert in mimicry. This mimicry is something that I went to research more and decided to make his my main subject for my graduation project for two reasons:

1. Because of the fascinating shapes insects come up with to blend in their surrounding or pretend to be a different animal (I'll go deeper into that later on).

2. Because I found out 2009 is the year of Darwin. I think this could be a big opportunity to combine my project with a museum or event somewhere this year. For example there is a Darwin Festival in Cambridge in the beginning of July, this would be an awesome place to show my work! The evolution theory fits perfect with this mimicry.

I was thinking maybe to extend the mimicry evolution to the future where insects start to imitate human objects to blend in the world humans are taking over from nature. If I could present my work at the University of Cambridge that would probably mean I have to let go of my other location, the lost places, but I don't mind. On the other hand, if the Darwin Festival goes through, I would be finished in July, leaving me enough time for a second opportunity and after all project in a different location (i.e. lost place). What ever I do, videomapping is a technique that I still want to use for both possibilities.

Insect shapes

It has been a while since I posted but I have not been sitting still. I found out that the world of insects is huge and that there are so much information about them! So I tried to find out what fascinates me the most. From everything I found I chose some pictures that really impressed me. For example the shape of this beetle penis:


Or this parasite called "Strepsiptera" that lives inside the body of a wasp. They grow so fast that the male has almost no mouth and the female's vagina is the only thing that actually grows so she stays in the body of the wasp after giving birth:


But the animal that fascinated me the most was the Praying Mantis. He is an expert in mimicry (imitating animals or plants) and when you look closer it has some amazing shapes:

Naturalis

Today I visited the Naturalis in Leiden. There I saw more insects being eaten than being born but they do have a section with drawers filled with all sorts of insects. This was nice to get a good view of how many different insects there are. Too bad there was no information about their behaviour or their characteristics. Maybe the Insectarium in Artis, Amsterdam will give me a better inside of the world of insects?

Subject vs. Location

The technique is not something I want to spend too much time on. That's why I have been doing some research about that back in December and January. My new challenge was to find a good subject and location for my video projection. I find it very important that the subject, the location and the mapping really come together.

For my subject I started to ask myself 'what fascinates me?'. I came up with some ideas like mental patients, my city Utrecht and everything that's around us but what we don't seem to notice. But the subject I automatically got carried away with, were insects. It's something I have been fascinated about since I was little. Insects have a negative connotation when it comes to human perception. However, when one looks a bit closer it lives in an other world that is both rather positive and fascinating. This enables both humans and insects to live harmoniously. Generally speaking, humans prefer to keep all sorts of insects outside rather than mix in their indoor setting. With time, humans also tend to desert these locations, leaving room for the insects to now make it their new living environment. Insects have many interesting features, for example their defense and offense mechanisms which can make them look funny when you enlarge them or not be seen at all. Playing with the size is something I also might use in my projection.



So with all that back in my mind, I started to think of locations that might interest me. There is a term used for these kind of locations and that's called Lost PLaces. A lot of people take pictures of these places and share them online like this person for example lost-places. An other interesting website for possible locations that someone tipped me is forten. I think that the location is very important. Not just the part I'm going to project on but also the surrounding. It's like a theater piece that is not indoors but uses the outside location and surrounding as part of their decor.

Video Mapping?

We all know the video projections that VJ's do during concerts and in clubs on big screens. Most of the time this is just on a rectangle white screen where they show their visuals that supports the music or act. With some software it is possible to use more video samples at the same time and place them at different positions within the projection area of the beamer. This is called mapping. You draw a map of where you are going to project on and place the video in it. You can also project on a building or object and use the mapping to define exactly where on the object you want to project a specific video.

Here are two examples of video mapping that inspired me. One is an abstract sculpture with video projected on it by Pablo Valbuena. I think it's to abstract for what I want to do but still a very beautiful peace. I think it's beautiful how he creates suggestion and get so much out of such a simple object.



The second example I want to show you is from easyweb.fr. This is a company in Lyon that has created their own software to make more advanced mappings. I thought that their level of creativity was not very impressive, however they are very good in using the map to it's full potential.