Bioluminescence @ The Station Creative - Wagga Wagga
The Bioluminescence Project headed to Wagga Wagga to create projections for the launch of Eastern Riverina Arts’ new creative space The Station Creative! We ran workshops on Wednesday 14 & Thursday 15 May followed up by two nights of performances Friday 16 and Saturday 17 May 2025. Read below to find out how it went!
Day One: Hello Wagga Wagga! Day one started with some tech talk about frame rates, resolutions and video formats followed with hints and tips on getting better video out of your devices by thinking about composition, contrasts of texture and colour, camera movements and other ways to make the ordinary extraordinary. With new techniques on how to shoot video the bioluminoids explored the Wollundry Lagoon taking the time to see the micro and the macro in their local environment and capture a bunch of video of it. After lunch it was editing with #Lumafusion to get our content ready for the shows on Friday and Saturday night for the @easternriverinaarts Station Creative launch!
Day two: There is so much that goes into making a large scale video projection mapping installation and the Bioluminoids have only two days to pick it all up! Day two starts with the theory but that quickly turns into getting hands on with the software and hardware in the classroom and before they know it they are outside setting up the projectors and mapping buildings. But it is not just about the mapping, it's also important for them to practice and learn all the different content options for the projections. The photos show the two "ops stations" with a variety of live performance options including MIDI controllers to launch their clips that are loaded into Resolume, video microscope, an old Android phone running @eye_candy_portals glitch camera, a video synthesiser and other fun toys. @eye_candy_portals also did a quick tutorial on how the custom app for the Beyard is built and loaded some of their videos into it. After all of that, the sun went down, we put in to action what we'd learned and had the three locations mapped and ready to go for the first show for the @easternriverinaarts Station Creative launch!
Day three was our first performance and the Bioluminoids kicked it and ripped it! After a group feed of pizza, setting up the kit, a final safety briefing and sorting some tech issues, it was show time! It was chaos with hundreds of people, bands playing next to us on the stage and two projection ops stations with a bunch of content options controlling three projectors and the crew handled it perfectly and ran a three hour show that never was the same thing twice! @eye_candy_portals had the Beyard out with plenty of punters grabbing the parasol while the crew used the arm mounted projector for lots of cool photo examples. We even had some of the audience interact with the live glitch camera on the set up.
Wow wow wow!! Two nights in a row and the Bioluminoids smashed it again!! Its a massive effort but they did with smiles and fun and supported each other, communicated with the crew and the punters and brought a whole heap of light, colour and joy! The opportunity to do a second night really embedded all of the skills they had learned. From set up to pack down they knew what to do and when to do it. They troubled shot, tested and then had the gear set up humming. The Beyard was in full swing with the audience lining up to have a photo taken with the parasol and projections. Thanks to the young people who signed up to blow minds and make smiles, thanks to the the always enthusiastic and joyful @eye_candy_portals and to the whole @easternriverinaarts team. The Station Creative launch was the best!.
Bioluminescence is supported by the NSW Government through @creatensw
