One of the ideas I have been thinking about for this project is to actually project an eye message onto a large building and in Norwich the Castle seemed the most appropriate, it oversees the city, as any castle would. It looks down, can be seen from most of the city and was originally built to protect the city from any invaders. If I could take the looking down literally and have a blinking eye sending out a message across the city I wonder how that would be received. I have sketched this idea but wanted to see how it would look as a proper visual, I originally put something together in Photoshop just to see how it could work and then thought what if I could make it a moving image...
This would provide an idea of how I was thinking it could look like and useful in certain documentation but ideally if I could make it a moving image it would strengthen any proposals I may be able to produce.
After trying in Adobe Premiere Pro and not getting the desired result with the masks tool I decided to tackle Adobe After Effects and see how that might work. The result may be a little crude but it does illustrate the idea in a much clearer format. At the moment the message is not confirmed, if I was to use this method i would have to consider what I would like to say and if I was fortunate enough to be able to actually produce it I would no doubt have to get the actual message cleared by whoever makes those sort of decisions...
This clearly needs further thought and investigation but it does start to inform me and my thinking as to how to develop this direction and see what sort of reaction it would receive.
Approaching the Norfolk Museums Service.
Following up this idea I decided to contact Norwich Castle to see what were the possibilities of it actually becoming a reality. I wrote an email to Esther Morgan, Communications Manager at Norfolk Museums Service putting the proposal to them with links to my blog and how I saw it looking but with the understanding that even if they were keen on the idea the message may well have to something that they were happy to have broadcast from Norwich Castle.
I received this response, to which I am currently waiting to hear anything further. I shall be following this up in time to see if there is any progress.
Hello Carl
Thank you for your intriguing email. The mock up of the eye projection is really striking. This wouldn’t be something I could say yes or no to – it would need to go to our programming committee for consideration as a contemporary art installation so I will forward your email to our Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rosy Gray. If Rosy is interested we’d then need to involve the Norwich BID in discussions as they own the projector, not the Castle.
Leave it with me and I’ll ask Rosy to respond in the first instance,
All the best
Esther
Esther Morgan Communications Manager