As junior Retta Kilgore walked from Kriescher to the library, she saw the south wall of the Wolfe Center pop out at her.
Its silver panels were pushed out, only to fly across the building in a streak of red and yellow to find a new place on the wall.
Kilgore isn’t losing her mind, it was a loop of student-produced animation being projected on the Wolfe Center as part of the “Cinema Optique” exhibition.
With four projectors spanning across more than 250 feet along the wall, the exhibition is the largest projection in Ohio and a preview for ArtsX this Friday, said Katerina Ruedi Ray, director of the School of Art.
“It definitely grabbed my attention since it came out of nowhere,” Kilgore said. “It’s cool to just see art.”
Senior Rob Lakis, who created the animation Kilgore saw, is in a group of 18 students whose works were displayed on Monday night.
This exhibition is part of his class, Projection Mapping, a collaboration between the art and theater and film department.
“The class expanded my interpretation of what I wanted to do with video,” said Lakis, a film studies student.
Lakis and his fellow students had to map their animation relative to the panelled-grid wall of the Wolfe Center, which is how he achieved the affect of popping out panels.
Other exhibits included a Mario Bros. influenced animation with a character jumping around, avoiding lasers, to scenes of ice melting and falling leaves.
“It feels awesome,” Lakis said as he watched the exhibit from an operating room. “The sheer number of people that come by will give me exposure as an individual. To see it in its final form is just a load off my shoulders.”
While the class experimented with projection mapping at ArtsX in 2012, it wasn’t nearly this size, which posed a challenge, said Thomas Castillo, assistant professor in theater and film who also co-teaches the class with Heather Elliott-Famularo, associate professor of digital arts.
“We wanted to explore the possibilities of large-scale projection,” Castillo said. “It’s something that can really engage large audiences in ways smaller projections can’t.”
Aside from the technical challenge of projecting animation onto the building, Castillo said the class was meant to challenge the student to think differently.
It encourages them to apply skills in ways they may not have thought of, he said.
“It’s incredibly avant garde work,” Ruedi Ray said. “They are doing this in leading [art] cities in the world and we have it here in BG.”
