PAST - PRESENT - FUTURE
Les Nuits des Bassins 2025
I directed a group of 10 artists in curating three projected interactive animations for a projection festival held in Arras, France. The project’s themes revolved around the past, present, and future of the warehouse that was being projected on.
Roles: Director, Producer, Animator, Editor, Compositor
STYLE FRAMES
Due to the project’s deep relation with the environment it was projected on, we initially pitched the concepts by presenting how they would look side by side in the real space.
Style frames of each concept were organized in the following order:
Past – Present – Future
Tunnels: The worker was stylized as art deco, which was a vital art period for the city.
Animation Tests/ Animatics
CONCEPT 1/ PAST
We refined the concept by researching the warehouse’s history, the very building onto which the work was projected. We also incorporated historical elements from the city of Arras, where the festival took place. The warehouse was once one of the first lamp factories, producing lamps used in coal mines, which is an industry central to the city’s heritage. Arras is also known for its extensive network of tunnels, which played a significant role during the Second World War. By researching and combining these elements, we created a meaningful animation that resonated with the site and met the client’s expectations.
The narrative of the past revolves around the lamp and the various historical contexts connected to it, including factories, mines, and tunnels. These events were depicted within the frame of a broken brick wall, creating a visual illusion as if the environments were being revealed through the wall from on the warehouse.
Mines: We created an adventurous roller-coaster experience and incorporated creatures from the historic myths of the city of Arras.
Style Frames + Sketches
Asset Samples
Factory: We collected real images of factory workers from Arras’s historic archives.
The interactivity was implemented through Kandinsky-inspired shapes. We created plastic cutouts based on one of Kandinsky’s paintings, which functioned as physical objects that visitors could freely manipulate. To integrate animation, we installed a camera above the table to record the surface covered with these shapes as participants interacted with them.
The captured movement was combined with looping virtual animations, allowing visitors to move and rearrange the projected visuals in real time. This created an interactive experience in which participants became an active part of the artwork in ‘present’ time.
CONCEPT 2/ PRESENT
An animated painting including symbolic elements present from the past and future of the warehouse, continuously transforming and morphing. Stylistically, it is inspired by Vassily Kandinsky’s paintings.
Several symbolic elements were designed for the morphing animations. Throughout the designs, we actively drew from Arras’s historic archives.
Animated Loops
Interactive Systems are being tested by Lillbelle through Touch Designer.
Interactive System Design
CONCEPT 2/ FUTURE
This projected sculpture serves as a transitional art piece, visually blending the hyper-developed future of AI machinery with the human experience. To make it more relatable and emotionally resonant, we connect the viewer's feelings to the machine we’ve created. The dystopian sculpture reflects a not-so-distant future, embedded with political and social commentary on both the possible future and the present of our society.
Interactive Design
Shuyu, another interactive designer on our team, created a system that detected facial emotions through a camera. Through this system, the audience was able to connect their emotions to the art work by triggering visuals based on different facial expressions.
