AV Stumpfl, an award-winning creator of mobile and installation projection screens, multi-display and show control systems, has announced that its PIXERA media server system was used to support a stunning solo exhibition by Austrian artist Mirjam Baker, in Vienna.
Baker, who was born in Melk and attended the Royal College of Art in London, is an award-winning artist who works across painting and animation art. Her recent show, Dust, was held at the Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien in Vienna from 3 October to 21 November 2021. This show saw analogue and digital worlds combining.
Analogue & digital meet
The exhibition was curated by Veronika Rudorfer and featured a 13-minute animation at its centre, with twelve different sequences each in different colours. The succession of hand-painted individual images created a colourful experience for the visitor.
Baker’s image compositions are concentrated around a middle line, reminiscent of a horizon. As the audience observed the pulsating colour planes, they could lose themselves in deep, imagined spaces.
For the installation of this exhibition, imusee’s Abraham Ananda Bauer called on Gerald Herlbauer and the 4youreye team, who have experience in putting together technically challenging exhibition projects.
Talking about the Dust project, Herlbauer says:
“The animation film consists of numerous photographed pastel paintings, that needed to be shown in the best quality possible.
“First trial runs with compressed formats and a standard media player convinced us that using a Digital Projection E-Vision 11000 4K-UHD laser projector and the PIXERA media server system instead would be a much better option, since we would be able to reliably play out ultra high-quality uncompressed image sequences. The difference was directly apparent and very tangible.”
The right techincal solutions
“I wanted to show the film’s images in a vivid and clear way, since the details of the photographs, the visibility of the original pigments on paper, are so vital for experiencing the film,” adds Baker.
“When Gerald mentioned the possibility to use uncompressed TIFFs instead of a compressed film, I absolutely wanted to try it. In addition to that, the 4K projection made it look even more fantastic, all details were visible, the notion of it being a digital medium disappeared with such fine grain images.”
In a write-up of the exhibition, art critic Daniel Kothenschulte touches on how the right technical setup was crucial:
“In the continuing flow of movement, the images join together to become a complex whole; an excursus on elementary color effects and the encounter with painting in its purest form, the color pigment. But in order to experience this, a further element is needed, namely the light from the projection. Interposed is a high-resolution video in 4K format. This, in turn, makes the encounter with the actual paper images into a special event.”
Last month, AV Stumpfl announced that it had provided a new screen and server solution to Water World Ocean Park in Hong Kong. The park’s wave pool is now home to a 20-metre long Optizvision LED screen. This can be scheduled to capture guests using a live camera source and display the footage across the 3.8metre high screen.
