What was it about the Beetle in particular that captured Meyer’s interest? “I’m exploring the cultural icon that is the VW beetle,” he answers. “The ‘Herbie’ is such an icon, so my projection is a celebration of that, while I play around with colour and movement. It’s an icon, it references bohemian culture, bright colours; the VW was a pop cultural icon used in so many music videos, television programs and advertising in the ’70s. What happens to a classic industrial form when it becomes a cultural icon?”
What can viewers expect to experience when they engage with The People’s Car? “There isn’t a narrative in the work but you journey through rhythm,” Meyer explains. “The projection implies motion; I use rhythmic visuals, I project moving patterns on the car that will work really well with the iconic nature of the VW beetle. I will be introducing people who might not have heard of the VW Beetle to the car, using its history and its historical place in popular culture.” The People’s Car is a celebration of the transience of bohemian culture and the repetitive time patterns of the open road. Aesthetically, this work is inspired by ‘live CGI’ software from the 1990s such as Cthuga and Plaswave, which generate visual patterns.
Meyer describes the nature of the projected media in the work as ‘unstable’ referring to his method of engaging digital media as a tool for live visual expression rather than setting things in film. “Animation is a tedious and time-consuming process,” he observes. “I trained as a 3D animator and I produce software that allows me to improvise with live visuals. Very early on I wanted to be removed from the endless solving of technical problems, trying to imagine time as you go along, key framing and spacing problems. I developed a live visual style; I use that in my artistic practice all the time. The car will look like it’s moving,” he adds. “The challenge is in creating an implied sense of motion and rhythm through the textural use of light and movement on the vehicle, even though it’s pre-prepared in specific instances of my work.”
Meyer says the nature of play is a very important thing in this work generally and for him personally in this project, being free as he is with The People’s Car to create whatever he likes, in the nature of a musician improvising, something which is not always the case with commissioned works. “My hobby is my work,” he explains. “I get commissions from the State Government and the City of Melbourne and corporations and so on, but this is something where I can do whatever I want to do. I want to see what happens,” he adds. “Even in the concept stage The People’s Car comes from an improvised method of trial and error.”
Finding the right place for the car was an issue, Meyer says. “I needed to find a site that wasn’t going to impose a risk to people when they stop to look at it.” The People’s Car installation is at site 22, on the corner of George and Gertrude streets. Although there won’t be a soundtrack to go with the visual installation, Meyer says that this work references sound along with movement through the projection. ”I won’t be engaging audio but it is a journey through rhythm. The projection references the fact that you can listen to any audio when you are driving and our brains synchronise with the sound, it becomes part of you. But this is a pilot work; it might eventually have its own sound designer. It’s a light show but in it I want to understand how music works with light.”
Meyer has been working in live projection since the mid-1990s, collaborating with Melbourne based software developers and artists to create and progress Interactive Video Performance and Digital Projection Mapping at music and arts festivals worldwide, amongst many other things. He wears a few hats for the Projection Festival as since 2007 he has been the senior projectionist and technical director, providing projector hire and projection design through his own company Multimedia Events Australia, while also creating artwork for the festival. As well he is on the board of The Gertrude Association, the body responsible for producing the Projection Festival. The People’s Car is a departure from his usual form of artistic expression in this regard; he is more used to projecting onto buildings. “Old buildings have a presence ahead of any development to the street scape or embellishment to the building. Projecting onto buildings means I can also play with the meaning other people have developed for these old regal buildings. I ask ‘what is streetscape?’”
BY LIZA DEZFOULI
