Two years ago, Spanish group Telenoika blew everyone away with their enormously popular audiovisual mapping presentation on the Ruins of St Paul’s. ‘Encounters’ told the story of times past and the emergence of a new Macau, all projected onto the remnants of the iconic façade.
The presentation was so popular, the creators were invited by the Cultural Affairs Bureau to come back to Macau and lead a three-month intensive workshop. Twenty students with audio, multimedia and graphic design backgrounds were chosen to participate, and were taught the general concepts of mapping, and audio and visual techniques.
“We had classes every day for three months, learning all the elements of mapping,” says Antony Sou. “And then spent the following three months designing and developing our own shows.”
The group met once a week to work on each presentation, with regular Skype calls to their teachers back in Barcelona.
“Mapping is a real creative collaboration,” says Eloi, a visual tutor from Telenoika. “Everyone has lots of ideas, and projects just naturally evolve. Whether we do that in person or online, the results are the same.”
Using graphic design and 3D models, audiovisual mapping brings together original music and video images on the contours of a building’s façade, creating stories that can explore the historic depth and cultural heritage of a building’s location.
“The point is to tell a story – you use the building to tell a story about it or the area you are in,” says Eloi.
This year, as part of the Macau Arts Festival, the group of students put their skills to the test and showed two original performances, one at Tap Seac Square and the other at Mandarin’s House.
“The presentation at Tap Seac Square is more abstract,” says Momoko Lee, who worked on the graphics.
“The music is very electronic and goes well with the abstract images,” adds Gigi Lee.
“Mandarin’s House is quite different,” explains Joyce Kuok. “It really tells the story of the house, and the owner. It covers the origins, the Golden period, the degradation and the renovation. That one is played with traditional, contemporary Chinese music.”
Although very the experience was very intense and a lot of hard work, the students are keen to pursue any future mapping opportunities.
“This workshop was such a great opportunity to learn from these guys. I was very inspired by their work, and feel really lucky to have worked with them,” says Antony.
