In the end tribute
This project was created in collaboration with Julia Hołyńska, a student from the University of Kraków (Poland), who was completing an Erasmus semester at ESAD Pyrénées in Pau.
It emerged from a casual conversation between two people getting to know each other. As the discussion quickly turned to our respective musical tastes, we realized that we were both big fans of the rock band Linkin Park. There is therefore a strong symbolic aspect behind this interactive poster project, as Linkin Park was the first thing that connected the two of us. We wanted to work on a project that would pay tribute to the band, and particularly to its singer Chester Bennington, who passed away in 2017. We combined our respective skills—animation for Julia, and coding/creative coding for me, combined to a bit of motion design and video mapping—to create an interactive installation in which the participant is invited to compose a poster featuring animations inspired by the band, by interacting with a wooden music keyboard. The song In the End plays on a loop in the background, making it feel as though you are composing a music video in the form of a poster using the keys of a musical keyboard.
The keyboard used to compose the poster consists of a wooden structure, beneath which copper strips were attached. Wires were then connected to the copper strips to ensure the transmission of an electrical signal to a Bare Conductive Touch Board, which is responsible for detecting when the wooden structure is touched (as the human body is conductive). It was necessary to upload custom code to the Touch Board in order for the device to function, and to assign each “key” of the keyboard to a corresponding input on the Touch Board within the video mapping software MadMapper.
Julia created the majority of the installation’s animations, while I mainly handled the technical aspects of the project, although I also contributed several typographic animations and took part in composing the visual layout. The aesthetic is intentionally raw, even “punk,” with the possibility of layering and overlapping the different animations.
