Projecting Change: the Empire State Building is produced by the Oceanic Preservation Society and Obscura Digital, in collaboration with Discovery Channel, Vulcan Productions, Spinifex Group, Photo Ark, the Li Ka-Shing Foundation and Empire State Building Trust. (Photo Courtesy of Oceanic Preservation Society via Discovery Channel)

Obscura Digital is the creative and technical collaborator with OPS, having a specific role in developing new strategic techniques for large-scale environmental campaigning in the film RACING EXTINCTION.

MOBILE PROJECTION VEHICLE

Obscura’s founder Travis Threlkel, a creative technologist and visual artist, has been conspiring with documentary director Louie Psihoyos since 2011. Threlkel had the ideation for a mobile projection vehicle that would become an icon for the environmental scene.

The mobile projecting Tesla car allows Obscura to display images on desired object, raising awareness on preservation. (Photo Courtesy of Obscura)

The vision manifested in the form of an environmentally sustainable, high performance Tesla car, which Obscura transformed and equipped with a robotic video projection system that deploys out of the back window and is controlled by a joystick, three different lenses, an electroluminescent paint job by Darkside Scientific, disappearing license plate, interactive tools for live projections, custom engineered power mobile power systems, and custom media.

The undercover mobile eco-projection vehicle creates the opportunity for Louie, Travis and race car driver Leilani Münter to be able to quickly get in and out of places, giving them the flexibility of being able to show up and set up at any given location before people even know what’s happening and get out before getting caught.

One of the challenges was designing a mobile projection system that enables video content to work on variable architectural surface areas, without having the ability to map the space ahead of time, nor being able to design content that works with a specific space.

As a solution, Obscura’s team designed a custom video projection system with on-the-fly controls for rotation, scaling, stretching, masking and letterbox correction in order to compensate for in-the-field corrections that allows them to illuminate just about any surface area.

The idea is to use this mobile projection system to juxtapose some of the meaningful locations with environmental messages in iconic ways. As an example, projecting toxic chemical symbols onto the actual vapor plumes from oil refineries, something that has never been done before. Visual media content is activated from hand-held mobile devices and connected to the projector via an in-car.

Obscura designed this non-invasive, ephemeral tactic to spread environmental messaging and visuals on symbolic landmarks and public spaces, city by city, with new locations and techniques that will be revealed as the project evolves. There is a lot more to come with what Obscura and OPS are conspiring to do.