Art + Media + Design Works Displayed at Projection Arts Festival

On a dark night in Binghamton, N.Y., earlier this month, awe-struck crowds stood and stared towards the top of a downtown building as a massive spider crawled across its shattered windows and crumbling exterior.

The scene that might seem straight out of a monster movie was in fact one of three original animations created by members of East Stroudsburg University’s Art + Media + Design program and displayed during Binghamton’s annual LUMA Projection Arts Festival from Sept. 11-12.

The festival, which draws around 30,000 spectators each year, features original 3D animations, light installations and projection mapping created by visual artists. Binghamton’s own buildings serve as large-scale canvases as artists’ works are projected onto them.

Damian Thorn-Hauswirth, assistant professor of art + media + design, and integrated art and design majors Olivia Klein and Annika Szardenings had their animations selected for the festival from a pool of other artists from around the world.

“It is incredibly rewarding to see students’ work featured in such a visible and unique setting,” Thorn-Hauswirth said. “Projects like this expose them to creative opportunities they may not have known existed and help build confidence in the many ways their creative and technical skills can translate into professional work.”

The animations were submitted as part of the Peg Johnston Living Lights Project, a juried community component of the festival. Artists were provided with a digital template of a downtown façade and challenged to create artwork responding to the architecture of the building, Thorn-Hauswirth said.

“That added another layer of creative problem-solving, as students had to adapt their ideas specifically for projection onto this architectural form,” Thorn-Hauswirth said.

A veteran of the art form, Thorn-Hauswirth worked in several animation roles for over a decade before joining the art + media + design faculty. He said the festival project gave students an opportunity to see how animation can be applied beyond traditional film and television to a wide range of professional and public-facing contexts.

“Students were challenged to take techniques developed in the classroom and adapt them to the architecture of a real building, requiring them to think differently about composition, scale, timing, and how animated imagery interacts with physical space,” he said.

In addition to Klein’s spider animation, Szardenings’s design combined live-action video, photography and hand-drawn elements into a spring-inspired scene. Thorn-Hauswirth’s design utilized 3D techniques to create an underwater scene featuring an octopus and submarine.

The students’ designs served as their final projects in their Animation and Advanced Animation courses.

“The project encouraged students to problem-solve creatively while gaining experience with projection-based media and site-specific animation,” Thorn-Hauswirth said.

Learn more about ESU’s art + media + design program.

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