"Parsons Does the Sims" Project Installation

For the Parsons Does The Sims exhibit (awesome double entendre) at the Chelsea Art Museum, my partner and I (not a double entendre, despite the hand on the shoulder) created a multi-screen, double projection installation of our machinima video work.

We began by augmenting and editing the footage of our SimLady along with some stock footage we acquired.
We also ordered some pretty cool fabric from a NY company called Rosebrand. They sell all sorts of cool fabrics. Mostly, they sell stuff for theatrical productions...mostly. We had them cut up our fabric and make four 8x4.5 ft. panels for us.
The Tuesday before the opening of the show, James (my business partner) and I headed over to the Chelsea Art Museum with some scrap fabric we ordered to set up our stuff and run some tests before hanging the good stuff.

We used Duct Tape to hang up our preview panels and projected some test video. Everything looked pretty cool to us, so when we got our good panels of fabric, we hung them using twine, to get a feel for how they would look when we strung them with wire.












So here, James is putting the final touches on our turnbuckles and twine. As you can see, the fabric has a little bit of a drape-like wrinkle thing going on. We decided at this point, that we definitely wanted to do a bottom level of support, just like the top, to get rid of said wrinkle thing.




















This is a detail picture from the next day of our wire and turnbuckle apparatus. Just like the twine business before, but much stronger, straighter, and more awesome. Below is a detail picture showing how the panels hang in relation to one another.





From this blurry image, you can sort of make out our projector setup. Using these poles that extend from the floor to the ceiling, we hung our projectors using some heavy-duty Dr. Octopus arms. The little white box on the floor contains a mac mini and various cables, power strips, and other electrical wonders that give life to our piece.


Here are some pictures of our installation (from both sides) in all its glory:

To tell you the truth, our piece looks a whole lot better if the room is much darker. However, the people that had artwork in the room we were in wanted to see their stuff too, so we had to turn on some other lights...whatever. You can still get the basic idea from these pictures, our SimLady is projected on one side, while some psychedelic imagery is projected on the other (basically). Below, I've included a condensed step by step instruction set for those of you who want to create your own, double projection, multi-screen installation.

1. Find a space suitable for such an installation. We ended up using the Chelsea Art Museum.
2. Measure the space and decide where your screens are going to end up. Make sure you have enough room on either side of the screens (front and back) for the projector to fill the surface area with an image.
3. Order, make, or acquire four semi-transparent screens made of fabric or plastic.
4. Buy, borrow, or steal the following-->two lcd or dlp projectors, 8 turnbuckles (with appropriate accessories (eyelet screws, s hooks, etc.), one spool of thin, coated steel wire, two mechanisms for displaying your imagery (computers, dvd players, etc), drill, drill bits, anchors (if needed), system for hanging/holding projectors (poles, shelves, the ground, etc.), power source with cabling of appropriate length and number.
5. Drill eight holes between two columns/walls/trees equal distance from each other, front to back, four on each column/wall/tree, at the height you want the top of the screens to be (repeat for the bottom set). Make sure that the distance between to top set of holes and the bottom corresponds to the height of your fabric/plastic panels.
6. Screw in eyelet screws in all drilled holes.
7. Cut eight lengths of cable so that they will reach from one screw on one side of the column/wall/tree to the other and give enough slack so that they can be secured to each screw.
8. Secure one end of the cables to one set of screws.
9. Thread each of the top cables through the top of one of the four panels (one panel per cable).
10. Secure the other side of the cables to the other set of eyelet screws using the turnbuckles.
11. Do the same for the bottom set of cables and screws.
12. Tighten your panels to the desired tautness using the turnbuckles.
13. Set up the projectors several feet from the panels (depending on the size of the panels, the projectors will need to be closer or farther away).
14. Adjust the distance and height of the projectors to fill the entire surface area of the panels.
15. Hook-up the dvd players/computers to the projectors and display images to help with previous step.
16. Turn off the lights or wait until the sun goes down and enjoy the awesomeness.