Taking art off gallery walls and bringing it to a larger audience

Façade Festival is an annual public art initiative and projection mapping festival organized by the Burrard Arts Foundation in Vancouver. The festival aims to create more opportunities for people to experience art without having to step into an art gallery. Ten artists were chosen to participate in this year’s festival, and they used a variety of styles and mediums for their individual presentations, each of them unique in their tone and voice. Go2 was honoured to be on board as the technical partner for the second year in a row.

Our team mentored each of the artists, making sure their final presentations fit the iconic structure of the art gallery to a tee. We also tested all of their work on our in-house 8ft 3D model of the art gallery so there would be no surprises on the final day.

Go2 won a 2017 Canadian Special Events Regional Award for our work on this project.

Techniques used: Projection Mapping, 3D Animation
Client: Burrard Arts Foundation

Overview

The festival ran for seven days, with projections starting at 8 pm and going till 11.30 pm each night. Our team presented an original finale titled “Contradistinction.” Using contrasting 2D and 3D graphics, precisely mapped manipulations, and depth illusions, we were able to transform the art gallery into a playground of light and kaleidoscopic movements. Playing with the building’s structural outline, our team of constraint-breakers pushed the limits of digital art, technology and soundscape for a mind-melting spectacle of cross-genre artistic expression.

This year, the Façade Festival drew an approximate crowd of 40,000 attendees and the gorgeous artwork was widely shared on all forms of social media. We were so thrilled to be a part of an art initiative of this size in our home city, Vancouver.