The learning curve on all things projection has and is huge! Words banded about such as media servers,pixel mapping and much more. In my time at LIPA I have tried a few different platforms such as Resalume which is primarily designed for DJ’s and Isadora more the the theatre world. Both ok but not quite there for me on speed and ease of use, me and Isadora fell out several times as it has a tendency to just stop working ! not ideal. Over the summer I attended a Women in AV gathering in London with guest speaker and personal projection heroine of mine Nina Dunn, her talk was fascinating as yes there is a lot of technical aspects to get your head around but she talked about her journey and those learning curves which gave this newbie hope. During the networking following I had the chance to talk further with Nina and talking about my new adventures at university and all things projection, her advice was to have a look at the new QLab 4 with a dedicated video element . I had in my first year had a tiny play with the software for my sound module and had found it really nice to use, perhaps because it is a Mac based software yey!!
QLab4 pixel mapping
So a little research and playing with it pre tech for Bright Lights Big City my biggest video work to date at LIPA , both me and my assistant Matthew Wane were convinced . There are more complex and stable ways of projection as we were running with two laptops and no media server, with some incredible companys out there producing some powerful pixel mapping tools . One standout for me is Disguise who have worked on some amazing projects, including a few for Nina.
https://www.disguise.one/en/showcases/theatre/ great powerful software
https://figure53.com/qlab/ home of q lab 4
https://somethinggraphic.net/ Nina Dunn