User:Jenimaro/sandbox

Projecting Images and Mapping Architecture (piama)

Projecting images (perhaps accompanied by a soundscape) onto buildings and other structures outdoors after dark has gained currency as a contemporary arts and design (advertising) practice in the opening decades of the 21st century. Artists began using piama as a new medium from the 1980s onwards to create large scale ephemeral public art works with critical and provocative content. See, for instance, ....

Such practices are by nature ephemeral and performative, existing only after dark for a bounded period of time and in relation to a clearly delimited outdoor space. Their effects are contingent on the live presence of an active and mobile audience willing to immerse in a particular dynamics of space, time and social experience in a series of events laid down by the artist-designer, yet maintaining potential for active engagement and indeterminacy.

The term ‘architectural projection’ is often used in referring to this recently emerging swell of creative activity, but collides with the traditional use of the term to describe any physical feature of a building that extends out beyond its structural envelope or roofline. Researcher and projection artist Jen Brown (aka Jenimaro) coined the word ‘piama’ - derived from ‘projecting images and mapping architecture’ - as a more succinct and accurate descriptive term. It is worth noting that piama artists and designers may produce ephemeral interactions with the actual architectural projections of a building in the traditional sense, as well as with the walls, windows and other features that sit within its main envelope.

Jen Brown, 23 May 2014