Optoma
| Industry Art |
| Region UK |
|
Type of Solution High brightness laser projection |
|
Installation Company Tom Burke |
| www.optoma.co.uk |
| Tom Burke is a musician and artist who first achieved success in the music industry with his band Citizens! Their infamous music video True Romance explored expressions of queer sexuality protest and ownership of public space and was briefly banned from YouTube in 2013. In 2017 Tom was selected to join the University of the Underground, a radical educative structure whose board includes Hans Ulrich Obrist, Noam Chomsky and Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova, where he activated new models of collaboration between theatre, music, film and political philosophy. Tom and his wife, Chilean architect Carla Aldunate, are transnational artists, practicing between London, Santiago de Chile and Amsterdam. |
“The installation looked really great. I was so impressed with the brightness and sharpness of the image. Even when close up to the screen you could not see individual pixels.”
Tom Burke
Art meets activism in Climate Change exhibition
The Challenge
Challenge
Musician and artist, Tom Burke, needed a bright, high resolution projector for the premiere of his film From Here We Go Extreme, which highlights how global warming is turning fertile farmland in Chile into an arid desert landscape and the impact this is having on people’s lives.
This intense film combines music and documentary modes of storytelling, with extensive research into a community experiencing global warming induced desertification.
To heighten its impact, the artist wanted to present the film in an unfamiliar way and built a bespoke screen measuring 488cm wide by 91.5cm in height. The three channel film would then be split across the screen with three videos playing side by side in some places and a very wide single image at other times.
Solution
To achieve the brightness and sharpness he needed when installed 8m from the screen, Tom needed an especially high resolution, laser projector and opted for Optoma’s 5,000-lumen ZU500T WUXGA resolution Duracore laser projector.
This feature packed projector offers advanced installation options including HDBaseT, lens shift, four corner correction and 360° positioning in any direction. It also has horizontal and vertical lens shift and 1.6x optical zoom, allowing for quick and accurate installation.
Tom said: “With the projector’s four-corner correction function, I was able to fine tune the geometry to fit perfectly onto my bespoke sized screen. Through this and the lens shift it was easy to line up the image and get this bang on!
“Before selecting the projector, I used Optoma’s distance calculator. This was really easy to use and gave me the reassurance the projection distance would work with the screen size. It was great to have this tool.”
The film was played from a media player which also streamed the audio to a Bose Bluetooth speaker.
Results
The free exhibition opened at the AMP Studios in London at the end of August and was part of the annual South Bermondsey Art Trail.
Tom said: “I was absolutely delighted by the reaction from visitors. The exhibition was a massive success.
“Obviously this is an intense film that straddles art and activism and shows what climate change means and looks like from a community where their farming land is turning into desert. It compares this to our perspective in the global north and west. People were visibly moved by the film and interested in the project – which was our intention.
“The installation looked really great. I was so impressed with the brightness and sharpness of the image. Even when close up to the screen you could not see individual pixels.
“Having this bright projected film in the dark space created an almost theatrical experience that took visitors outside their world.”
Tom added: “We will be screening the film again in Santiago in December when the climate change summit will be taking place in the Chilean capital.
Photography ©Tom Burke
Tom Burke
Tom Burke is a musician and artist who first achieved success in the music industry with his band Citizens! Their infamous music video True Romance explored expressions of queer sexuality protest and ownership of public space and was briefly banned from YouTube in 2013.
In 2017 Tom was selected to join the University of the Underground, a radical educative structure whose board includes Hans Ulrich Obrist, Noam Chomsky and Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova, where he activated new models of collaboration between theatre, music, film and political philosophy.
Tom and his wife, Chilean architect Carla Aldunate, are transnational artists, practicing between London, Santiago de Chile and Amsterdam.
From Here We Go Extreme
An opera film set at the southern border of the Atacama desert in Chile. As the desert expands and the land dries out new ways of living must be negotiated. The film proposes an alternative language for activism as it combines documentary with music.
A close study of land, industry and community asks the question - In the age of all extremities, what can we learn from the experience of communities living in extreme environments?
The collective mediatised figure of the ‘climate monster’ perpetuates a dualistic division between nature and human. From Here We Go Extreme investigates climate not only as weather, but as a set of entangled economic, industrial and cultural relations.
Developed in collaboration with architect Carla Aldunate, photographer Marcos Zegers (both from Chile) and Dutch opera singer Stefanie Jansen, the project continues ongoing research into contrasting geographic imaginaries between the global north and south.
From Here We Go Extreme is a music film, an archive of sound recordings, photography and interviews, and a series of workshops that use music to find collaborative ways of representing climate that moves the language of western environmentalism beyond that of the ‘climate monster.’