1xRun alum Chris Saunders launched his Likuid Art project this past October, animating 2D art he was developing with filmmaker/producer David Booth Gardner. Likuid Art which functions as an online platform for live-action art, debuted it’s massive kaleidoscope experience for New Orleans’ Voodoo Festival this past year in the form of an immersive 3D video projection dome. “We wanted to take people on a rollercoaster ride through the world of art,” Likuid Art’s founder and CEO David Booth Gardner told FastCompany in an October article.
The goal was an interactive art space that incorporates powerful visuals combined with super sound. Pepsi Creator entrusted the project to Likuid Art, where digital illustrator and designer, Saunders, is Creative Director. The idea was a 40 foot projection dome that incorporates powerful lights and 3D visuals, combined with super sound. “They trusted us a huge amount to use our skills and knowledge to create a show based on art and what we thought would be a cool experience,” says Saunders. “We only had to do a little subtle branding towards the end. There’s no Pepsi branding within the actual art pieces.”
To create images large enough for the dome, they rendered images from four cameras, then ran it through a 12-hour encoding process to fit without distortion within the dome’s curved dimensions. Saunders told FastCompany he wanted the audience to feel like they were “living inside” of the artwork. Saunders had multiple pieces shown at the dome during Voodoo, one of which was a favorite of many viewers, called “Tiger’s Eye Mandala,” as well as his “Lucid Duality.”
“They didn’t know what they were looking for, they just knew that they wanted something at the intersection of art, technology, and music, and something cutting-edge that people hadn’t seen before,” says Gardner, “In order to find that, they had to find people who were underground, who hadn’t yet been discovered.” The process involved coordinating some 75 artists, animators, musicians, technologists, and fabricators around the world. Gardner and Saunders chose the artists, assigned their works to complementary animators, roped in sound designer Christophe Eagleton and his team at Dynamite Laser Beam to create an original score, and assembled it all into one fluid 18-minute sequence. “At the same time,” adds Gardner, “it couldn’t feel like a commercial. It had to stand up next to all the other art pieces, so everyone knew that they came to see a show, not a commercial.”
“Where Am I?” by Craola. For more videos of Saunder’s curated artists, including Risk, and Android Jones, visit LikuidArt on Vimeo.
Gardner said he wants his company to be “a Netflix for digital art content.” Likuid Art is a library of digital art, and subscribers can pay a monthly fee to have access to the company’s catalog of art. “This allows anybody in the world to have incredible art inside their home and play it on their TV screen,” Gardner told Billboard. Likuid Art added its own capital to the undisclosed, but restricted budget they received from Pepsi to better launch Likuid Art as a brand (their website going live two weeks after the Voodoo Fest) and position the installation for scaling up and touring other festivals.
Follow Chris Saunders @ChrisSaundersArt and check out the Likuid Art’s website for more info.
-1xRUN